You’ll be after a birch faced ply I’d have thought.
If its the edges that are on view (and the faces painted) I think you want birch all the way through – not just ‘faced’ – some ‘birch’ plywoods are veneered softwood.
A lot of commonly available hardwood plywoods have a thin fine grained veneer and a core of plys that are a bit of a dogs breakfast when seen as a cut edge – the face ply’s are thiner than the core plys, the cores might be different colours to the face ply and each other, theres voids and crooked lines where spliced veneers have been overlapped. Standard hardwood plywoods tend to use a weird purple-y glue between the layers too. So – not that nice as an edge to have on view
The commonly available plys that have the nice, even width, same material throughout plys are Birch (everyone’s favourite) and Spruce.
Spruce is cheaper and bolder and a bit livelier (thinner boards tend not to want to sit flat so you need to consider that with what you’re building and have the structure hold itself flat and square. It has a brighter, bolder grain on the cut edge and not as smooth faced as birch – but in the right application it can can look really nice. Any cuts that go at and angle across the sheet (rather than straight along or across the board) can reveal some really nice chevron-like grain patterns on the cut edge
‘Wisa Spruce Special’ has a better quality face surfaces than standard construction spruce plywoods with a lot fewer, smaller knots and can look pretty nice.
Birch is usually double the price, much finer grained, much heavier and are stiffer, flatter boards. Probably easier to find than ‘spruce special’ with good face plys (as spruce is usually more commonly stocked for structural rather than decorative uses) you want to ensure its a grade with with low / no flaws and splices in the middle plys if you’re making a feature or the cut edges
Less commonly available and less commonly thought of – as sort of best of both worlds – is Poplar. A lot of standard plywood use poplar in the core hidden behind a far-eastern hardwood veneer – but ‘Efficiency Spanish Poplar’ has the same regular width ply’s thoughout as you get with Birch and has a face ply of good quality Poplar that actually you’d have to look twice to see isn’t birch. But it’s half the price, feels like half the weight and finishes really nicely. Very very pale – almost white when in the raw and needs careful clean handling until you’ve put a finish of it – one bonus it has is it uses a pale, neutral coloured adhesive between the plys unlike the near black glue lines between the plys in spruce and birch and makes the exposed edges less pointedly stripey. Looks gorgeous with a coat of OSMO – sort of iridescent around any small knots in the face plys
Those particular grades of Spruce and Poplar are unlikely to be on the the shelf at you’re local timber yard – good Birch you’d have a reasonable chance of finding (you can even get it in B&Q on a good day.) However a good independent would order any of those in for you.
If you have branches of Lathams or Timbmet then you’d get good options there. Meyers would also stock good stuff but harder to deal with as a cash-customer – but these are the people your local stockists would order from.
Yep b/bb grade birch plywood. Fantastic material. I make all sorts with it.
