Forest1 Red Oak Plywood panels edge banding

[PeakyBlinder71]

I would like to know if you can get edge banding for the Forest1 Red Oak Plywood Panels, maybe on special order?. I was meant to get a call from Shawne (Lifestyles co-ord Craigieburn Warehouse) in regard to this. That was 10th December 2021 so I'm not holding out

much hope.

My other question is can you get any larger Forest1 Red Oak Plywood Panels other than the largest ones you stock in store which

is (1200x800)?.

Sam

[EricL]

Hello @PeakyBlinder71 (Sam)

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's great to have you join us, and thank you for sharing your question about getting edge banding for Red Oak Plywood Panels.

I'm sorry to hear that the Craigieburn store has not gotten back to you. I'll have to speak to our providers and make a few inquiries for you. As soon as I have more information, I'll get back to you.

Are you planning on building furniture with it? Red Oak Plywood is engineered for a high-grade finish so if the sides are sanded properly you can get a very beautiful edge finish on it. Any updates on your plans with the timber would be much appreciated.

If you have any other questions we can help with, please don't hesitate to post them.   

Eric

[PeakyBlinder71]

Good Evening Eric,

Thanks for your reply and for any support you can offer me. My immediate projects are storage cabinets for my workshop as I have none. After that,

lots of furniture pieces. When I get time I'll upload a few of my Plans from Sketchup.

[Jason]

Looking forward to seeing your plans @PeakyBlinder71. I'm sure Eric will get back to you as soon as possible.

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. We trust you will get loads of helpful advice and inspiration from our wonderful community members. Please don't hesitate to post whenever you have a project to share or need a hand. 

Jason

[EricL · Accepted solution]

Hello @PeakyBlinder71  (Sam)

I've just spoken to our supplier and I'm sorry, but the Red Oak plywood sheets don't come any bigger than the ones the store carries. After a lot of searching with the help of my colleague, the closest iron on edging we could find is 21mm x 5m Melamine Edging Natural Wood. This is a close match, I suggest having a look for yourself at the store so you can decide. Another option to consider is to use Tasmanian Oak - Porta Range. Its colour and finish again are very close to the Red Oak. The only other idea that came to mind was to cut a strip of the Red Oak and use that as the timber edging.

If we were to step outside of convention for a moment, have you considered edging it with a contrasting timber like pine? This particular look will provide a nice highlight to your storage cabinets or perhaps go in the opposite direction with dark timber. Another option of course is doing a light stain on the timber so that any timber edging you put will at least be in the same tone as the Red Oak. 

Let me tag our experienced members @tom_builds and @JoeAzza for their recommendations.

Please keep us updated with your progress, we look forward to the start of your cabinet project.

If you need further assistance, please let us know.

Eric

[PeakyBlinder71]

Hi Folks,

Firstly thanks for all your replies, much appreciated!. Having done abit of research myself I've found a company here in Melbourne who apparently is

or was a supplier for Bunnings. They have some edge banding which I'm looking at today which by all accounts looks like an exact match for the

Red Oak Plywood. I will endeavor to keep everyone posted on this with photo's of my findings.

Just for everyones information Red Oak is apparently a lighter wood than White oak despite the name!, both share similar figuring.

[EricL]

Hi @PeakyBlinder71

Thank you so much for the update and it's great that you've found a banded edge that matches. If you have any other questions we can help with, please don't hesitate to post them.

Please keep us posted with your progress, we look forward to seeing the start of your storage project.

Eric

[PeakyBlinder71]

I can't figure out whats going on here. I've sanded the board usng 600 grit sand paper, applied one coat of oil based gloss varnish (F&W). As you can see it looks awful, like the varnish is sinking in on the raised gran but not on the lower?. Please can someone give some advice.

[MitchellMc]

Hi @PeakyBlinder71,

It might be a bit hard for us to identify the issue via images. Could you take another picture with a side-by-side comparison of one piece you've varnished and another you haven't? That might better illustrate what's going on. Is it the light versus darker grain from the tree rings that you're concerned about?

A common issue with stains and varnishes not absorbing into timber grain is sanding too finely, and 600grit would be on the finer side. Many would stop around 240grit when the timber starts to become smooth, and most wouldn't ever go past 320grit. Are you experiencing this same issue on a piece of timber that you haven't sanded to 600grit?

Nothing particularly "awful" jumps out at me, just some lovely grain highlighted by the varnish, but I do look forward to hearing more about the problem and assisting with a solution.

Mitchell

[PeakyBlinder71]

I've done some experiments.

Both boards have been sanded to 600 grit, one on the left I used undiluted Feast & Watson clear varnish, as you can see its not sunk into the full grain correctly and looks crap. One on the left I diluted with 75% Turps and applied two coats and looks better. I beg to differ with the sand paper, were talking about a very thin 0.4mm veneer, anything like 240 will cut right through to the veneer quite easily.

I think I will be going the shellac route as its easier to manipulate the viscosity, F&W clear varnish is just way too thick to penetrate the wood fibers