 Hi, I'm Malcolm Grant, Cabin Maker. In this video, we're going to talk about the pros and cons of plywood, particle board, and MDF as Cabin and construction material. The reason I'm going to do that is because there's a lot of people who are very strong in paintings about this. A lot of misconceptions. People generally think, ooh, plywood good, and particle board bad, and MDF terrible. Without really understanding, there's relative benefits of any of them as a building material. And the reality is, there's certain things, our plywood is good for some things, part board is good for some things, and MDF is good for other things. And it just depends what you want to do. So I'm going to start with plywood. And I would, plywood basically, what it is, is just layers of wood that is put up to directions to do each other. So these thin layers of wood, plywood is very strong material. It's light and is strong. It's a very good structural material. So if you're going to be able to sub-throw, once you screw it down to the wood, it's very rigid, and it's good for tiling. It withstands moisture very well. So if you're doing a bathroom, and you want to sub-floor any of your towels, where there's consistently going to be dampness kind of seeping through, the plywood is pretty much young, because you're really used. It's also strong. So when you screw joint here, this is pretty rigid construction. The screws will hold pretty well. So it gives it a lot of strength and it's light. So in some instances where if you're doing free standing furniture in a room for cabinet construction, or if you want to be light, let's say you're building free standing furniture for children's bedroom, plywood is a good choice because it's light and it's strong. And you can get reasonable veneers on it and get a decent finish. It's not used a lot in cabinet construction, and the reason I don't generally use it, because the downfall of plywood is because you have these various grains running against each other, plywood will work, and it's a big problem. If you leave plywood just kind of out, sitting on a shelf, it will be good. And I've built cabinets with plywood before, and sometimes the whole side of the cabinet will blow out. And they're always a little bit off, and the other thing you can apply with this, the layers of wood are not necessarily uniform thickness. So a sheet of plywood, even though it's supposed to be three quarter inch, will be a 16 through a 30 second of an inch off, and the problem with that is, and it's not even from sheet to sheet, it's not even or even across the same sheet, there's differences. So from a cabinet maker's perspective, it's always a little bit wonky and there's a lot of adjustment, and you don't get as accurate a cut. And then with the warping, you come to put your cabinets up, and they're a little bit warped, and so that's another disadvantage. Another disadvantage is the surface is not going to be as smooth as either a particle border MDF, where it's just a flat surface, and it's made in a giant press, and it's 100% uniform. So the surface isn't necessarily as smooth. So there's reasons why, although it's strong and it's light, as a cabinet making material, it's not necessarily my favorite choice. And certainly, as a cabinet making material for kitchen cabinets, if they're screwed into place, I would rather not use it, and I recommend not using it. The one thing I definitely tell clients is don't use plywood for cabinet doors, because on a cabinet, or a built-in cabinet, it's screwed into place. You have to use it on the sub-floor, and it's actually nailed down to the actual framework. So it's not going to go anywhere. But if you use plywood for cabinet doors, it's a real problem, because the cabinet door essentially is a piece of wood suspended on two points, flopping in the breeze. So there's nothing to keep it from twisting and turning in its own natural way. And plywood will definitely do this. This is a cabinet door that I took off, a project that advised the woman. I said, don't use plywood, you'll regret it. For a year later, she phoned me and she said, you've got to come back and change the store. I don't know if you can see how worked that is. I mean, this should be, this is a flat surface. So it should sit flat on this surface, and it went to the side. And when I was on the cabinet, it looked terrible. So I replaced it. And in those scenarios, this kind of was to blame, it's unfortunate. But that's sort of how it expents, because I told them to use it. So don't use plywood for cabinet doors. It's just, it's a big mistake, and you'll regret it. And it's difficult to, once, you know, cabinets are painted or stained and lacquered, and the cabinets are going to change over time with the sun. So if you end up at one job where all the doors worked, and all of them, but significantly, but the color had kind of weathered or not weathered, but it had a certain patina that the cabinets had obtained from the natural light. And it looked beautiful. It was a beautiful grain. And so we decided, well, we can't replace these doors, because the grain was so beautiful, and the way that the patina had changed over time with the light made it even more beautiful, but they were worked. So I said, well, you know, we'll fill with the hinges, we'll do what we can, but we're just going to have to leave it with a little bit of work, because it looks so, the grain looks so beautiful. So I wouldn't recommend plywood for cabinets doors. What I recommend mostly for cabinet construction is part of the board. Now, part of the board has a bad name, and that's from the 70s and 80s, and there's a lot of my production housing. They put cheap part of the board kitchens in, and it wasn't so much that the part of the board in the south was so bad, but the construction was very cheap. The real culprit would be part of the board drawers. One of the things about part of the board is this joint, if you screw here, it's not as strong, like the part of the board can split easier than plywood. So that joint wouldn't be as strong as plywood. That's okay if it's screwed to the wall. Where it's not okay is where you have a debt, what's called a dynamic load, if kitchen cabinets, built in cabinets, they're basically fixed to the wall, they're never going to move. What holds the rigid is the fact that they're screwed together and screwed to the wall. A drawer, however, is sliding in and out all the time. There's a lot of what engineers call a dynamic load on that. If you have a drawer that made out of part of the board, where it's just a screw to a staple part of the board, and the cheap kitchens, all they would do is staple it. This is three-quarter, but they use five-eight plywood, staple it in the joint, it really has no strength. All these part of the board kitchens, from the 80s, where they just use super cheap, staple part of the board, the drawers, where the ones that fell apart, and not only would they use this cheap part of the board on the sides, but they would use very thin, one-eighths material on the bottom. On a wide drawer, this just has no strength. It just, well, you guys have all seen that, right? So the reason, so the culprit is not that part of the board is that, in all instances, but it was just used where it wasn't very appropriate, in a lot of cheap kitchens, and that's why people hate it. However, part of what I use for cabinets, first of all, it's typically, that's a beautiful material, a nicer sample. Well, first of all, I guess I use drawers, I just don't use particle board drawers. For my cabinets, I use either a dovetail solid wood drawer, which, so that sort of eliminates the problem altogether, and I'm virtually an instructional joint. Even on the cheaper cabinets, I use a drawer, which, I mean, sometimes people ask me to align to it, and they say, look, we don't want to spend a lot on dovetail drawers, we want cheaper ones. It's a particle board, a bottom, solid part, but three quarter inch, but it's an integrated metal side. Now, these also are pretty much indestructible. This is a really solid drawer, this is not going to come apart, but hold a lot of weight, three quarter inch, just screw it into the bottom. So this is an instance where, when you've got the integrated sides, that a particle board drawer is really not such a problem. And this particular drawer is very inexpensive. A kind of intermediate drawer is this one. It's a similar concept. You have an integrated metal side with a slide. You do have a particle board at the bottom, but it's a heavy three quarter inch or five inch piece of particle board. This one is just more expensive than the other one I showed you because it's got the softwares. Here's another instance where you can get away with a particle board on a drawer if it's fastened to the integrated slide, where the sides of it are metal, and they're going to hold it together and you can solve these in the bottom. The particle board will work for a drawer in those instances, but not the way it was done in a lot of kitchens from the 7080s, mass production kitchens. It just fell apart, but don't use it. But I do use, I like to use particle board for the other sides of my cabinets. The reason being, it doesn't work. It's a very rigid material because a really nice smooth surface. The width of the material is very consistent, so it's very easy to accurate cabinets with part of the board that don't work and are solid and strong. And because basically cabinets are going to screw to the wall and screw to each other, there's actually no load on this joint. So there's not going to be any movement on this joint because it's screwed into place. So that is not a problem at all. Part of the board doesn't handle water quite as well as plywood. It's not so much of a problem. This is part of the board. This is a natural maple finish with what's called UV coating on it, which is a very hard, so lacquer, a special, super hard lacquer, and it's water roof. So water will get on this. This is completely water resistant. You don't have to worry about it. If your cabinets were sitting in six inches of water, it would actually damage the part of the board. But there's not a lot of instances in a kitchen where that's going to be a problem. One of the things that they used to it in the canvas in the Derrick-Anx 70s and 80s, the cabinets were sitting flat on the floor. My cabinets, you can see this, I'm going to check. Are... Yes. Sitting on these little plastic legs. So the cabinets are actually no wood touching the floor when I build a kitchen. So even though if this were sitting in water and wood soak it up, this is not touching the floor. These legs incidentally are good for 350 kilograms or something like that. So a huge amount of weight, they're also handy because you can run wires or pipes or anything underneath the cabinets. They're very functional. But there's no way that wood can soak up into this cabinet from the floor. So that's not a problem. If I'm doing an endgable for a cabinet, I always put my endgable in there. I don't know if you can see it. These little plastic spacers. So even an endgable on a cabinet like that, I don't need it sitting on the floor. So there's no wood touching the floor. There's no way that water can soak up into this. In terms of the cabinet, unless you had a flood in your floor, which is four inches of water, you won't catch the cabinet. Sorry about that. And even on the endgable, if you'd have to say two inches of water, we could replace that endgable and the cabinet wouldn't be damaged. So water is not for part of the floor cabinets. So it's not really an issue in terms of moisture. And it's a nice material. It's a solid material. And it has a really nice finish on it. So I like to use part of the board. And it's also good. If this was a cabinet door, you can get nice fan ears on it and finish it. You can get a really nice part of the board door with a lacquer to finish. This actually was the door for the endgable. And you can get in cherry and mojave and whatever. And it won't work. So it's a nice part of the board. It's a nice material for a cabinet construction. And for slab doors. Finally, MDF. The difference between part of the board. Basically, both of these are compressed out of the particle board. But it's bigger chunks. It makes a more heavy than plywood. A little bit lighter than MDF. MDF is medium density fiber. What it is essentially, it's also compressed sawdust, but it's much finer sawdust. What that does makes it heavier. But also, the big advantage. It's not as strong as plywood. It's in terms of the strength of the way it holds screws. It's pretty much like part of the board. Maybe they were so slightly stronger. It's a very heavy material. It's not a great material to make a cabinet boxes out of it. I don't know, I don't really know how to use it for that. What MDF is nice for. Is just for finishing materials. We use it a lot for trimming inner cabinets. Things like that. For endgables and trimming components. We can make nice paint-created... Paint's beautiful. It sands nicely and paint's beautiful. So you can make a cabinet with a horizontal MDF. It has a lot of the same properties as the vertical board. It's just a little bit heavier. So I don't want to use it. It's not for cabinet construction. I use the part of the board. In terms of price, plywood is a little more expensive. It's not a huge difference in terms of from a cabinet. It's just a fact that if you're using a decent grade material, in any of those, the cost of the materials is not going to change the overall cost of the project all that significantly. Another thing to concern is people also is formaldehyde in the smell of glue and things. This is not so much of a problem as you used to be. I know in the 70s and 80s, when you have a particle board cabinet, if you stuck your head in it, it was enough to knock you out. The smell of the glue was so strong. That's not the case. Any domestically or say North American manufacturer plywood or particle board or MDF really has very low trace elements of off-gassing. Most of them make what's called the CARB-2 standard, which is the California air regulatory board. Most of them make those standards, I think many of the ones I use do, which are very stringent standards in terms of their quality. It's not the way it used to be where you could smell it. The other thing is once this is installed, nearly always it's going to be lacquered or UV coated. It's all sealed up, but I think this stuff is going to be emitting gas into your environmental time. Any other idea? If you particularly want zero formaldehyde, or whatever they say, no added formaldehyde in the glue, which is more stringent, it is possible to order that in any of these materials. It's just a little more expensive, and there's a little more lead time in ordering. So hopefully that gives you a good idea. The plywood is lighter and stronger. It's not as intentionally stable as part of the board. MDF is heavier. It's a nice material for painting. It's a nice material for doing trim details. I like to do, like I'm sure you're hearing. Whoops. The detail on this drawer. MDF paints nicely. You can route the edges of it and paint the edges so you can get some of the trim details work nicely in MDF. And I think that's about it. So hopefully that clears out some of the differences or some of the confusion around which material is best for what usage. Thank you.