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Maple plywood vs solid cherry for face frames, I finally made the call
Did a job last week for a client in Portland who wanted custom TV units, and I used maple ply cabs with solid cherry face frames. The plywood stayed perfectly flat through the whole build, zero warping after glue-up, while my usual solid stock moves no matter how much I acclimate it. Has anyone else switched to ply frame stock for big panels, or am I overthinking this?
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tylerj2217h ago
Cherry is the absolute worst for that, @stellanelson, I swear it moves just from looking at it wrong. I did a set of cabinets last spring with solid cherry face frames and by the time I got them to the site two of the stiles had twisted enough to throw my reveals off by a good 1/16th. Ended up having to plane and re-glue the whole frame on site, what a nightmare. That's why I started doing what the OP did, maple ply for the big runs and then I'll use cherry only for the really short pieces like door stiles where movement is less of an issue. The ply just sits there and behaves, no drama, no fighting it.
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