PLYWOOD TECHNOLOGY

-AN OVERVIEW
Dr.E.SREENIVASAN
Technical Manager, R&D Division
THE WESTERN INDIA PLYWOODS LTD
BALIAPATAM
KANNUR
Ph:8289865990
E-Mail: dr.sreeniettammal@gmail.com

GENERAL
Plywood is a building material consisting of veneers (thin
wood layers or plies) bonded with an adhesive.
Plywood panels usually have an odd number of veneers.
The terms 3-ply and 5-ply are commonly used and refer
to the number of veneers used to make a panel.
Plywoods with seven or more veneers are also made.
The need for an odd number of veneers is caused by the
fact that wood is an anisotropic material, i.e.it has
different properties in its three main directions,
longitudinal, radial and tangential.

HISTORY
Plywood has it origins in laminating veneers around
3,500 years ago in Egypt during the days of the
Pharoahs. The early Greeks and Romans also used
veneers and plywood mainly for furniture.
From the mid 1800s modern plywoods were utilized in
pianos, furniture and tea chests. Plywood came of age
as a versatile construction material in the 1930s when
water resistant resins were used as glues giving plywood
longevity and integrity.
In India, Plywood manufacture commenced with the
establishment of two plywood factories in Assam, in
1923-24

WHY WE MAKE PLYWOOD?

Timber is around thirty times weaker across the grain
than along its grain direction. This is obvious when we
split wood with an axe. Thus by bonding adjacent timber
veneers at right angles using a rigid adhesive as
happens in the cross laminated construction of plywood,
we utilise this superior strength and stiffness along the
grain to overcome this weakness. Put another way,
plywood has no natural line of cleavage.
Plywood maintains the integrity of the timber and finds a
huge range of applications which utilise the enhanced
physical, chemical and mechanical properties

TYPES
Softwood plywood
Hardwood plywood

SOFTWOOD PLYWOOD
Commonly used softwoods for manufacturing plywood
are firs and pines.
Manufactured by gluing several layers of dry softwood
veneers together with an adhesive.
Used for wall siding, sheathing, roof decking, concrete
form-boards, floors, and containers.

HARDWOOD PLYWOOD
Made of hardwood veneers bonded with an adhesive.
The outer layers (face and back) surround a core which
is usually lumber, veneer, particleboard, or medium
density fiberboard.
It may be pressed into panels or plywood components
(e.g., curved hardwood plywood, seat backs, chair arms,
etc.).
used for interior applications such as furniture, cabinets,
architectural millwork, paneling, flooring, store fixtures,
and doors.

CHARACTERISTICS

Properties depend on the quality of the veneer plies, the order of

layers, the adhesive used, and the degree to which bonding
conditions are controlled during production.
Durability of the adhesive-to-wood bond depends largely on the
adhesive used but also on control of bonding conditions and on
veneer quality.
Plywood has significant bending strength both along the panel and
across the panel, and the differences in strength and stiffness along
the panel length versus across the panel are much smaller than
those differences in solid wood.
Plywood has excellent dimensional stability along its length and
across its width. Minimal edge-swelling makes plywood a good
choice for adhesive-bonded tongue and-groove joints, even where
some wetting is expected.

PROCESS IN BRIEF
Consists of nine main steps:
Log storage, log debarking and bucking, heating the
logs, peeling the logs into veneers, drying the veneers,
gluing the veneers together, pressing the veneers in a
hot press, plywood cutting, and other finishing processes
such as sanding.

LOG STORAGE
Depending upon the area and the type of storage
facilities available, logs are either piled dry and kept wet
by continuous or intermittent water spray, or are stored in
freshwater ponds. Dry land storage of logs under
sprinkler systems must give complete coverage of the log
piles, and must be kept in continuous operation during
high temperatures and humidity in order to minimize
fungal growth, and to prevent drying out and degradation.
Logs of suitable dimension and quality for slicing and
peeling are generally sorted in the log-yard upon arrival,
according to size and species. Handling may be by
heavy lift trucks, derricks or cranes, all of which are sized
to cater for the logs' dimensions and weight.

LOG DEBARKING&BUCKING
This is accomplished by feeding logs through one of
several types of debarking machines. This operation is to
remove the outer bark of the tree without substantially
damaging the wood.
After the bark is removed, the logs are cut to appropriate
lengths in a step known as bucking.

BOILING
(LOG HEATING -STEAMING/SOAKING)
The logs (now referred to as blocks) then are heated to
improve the cutting action of the veneer lathe or slicer,
thereby generating a product from the lathe or slicer with
better surface finish.
Blocks are heated to around 93C (200F) using a
variety of methods--hot water baths, steam heat, hot
water spray or a combination of the three.

PEELING
Logs are processed to generate veneer. For most
applications, a veneer lathe is used, but some
decorative, high quality veneer is generated with a
veneer slicer.
The slicer and veneer lathe both work on the same
principle; the wood is compressed with a nose-bar while
the veneer knife cuts the blocks into veneers that are
typically 3 mm (1/8 in.) thick.
Decorative hardwood veneers are usually sliced much
thinner than 3 mm (1/8 in.) thick.

CLIPPING
The veneer pieces are clipped to a usable width, typically
1.37 m (54 in.), to allow for shrinkage and trim.
Accurate clipping ensures saving of raw material and
minimizes cost of production
Types of clippers: manual, semi-automatic and automatic

DRYING
Part-1
Veneers are taken to a veneer dryer where they are
dried to moisture contents that range from around 1 to
15 percent, dry basis. Face veneer moisture contents
can range up to 25percent, dry basis. Target moisture
content depends on the type of resin used in subsequent
gluing steps.
The typical drying temperature ranges from 150 to
200C (300 to 400F).
The veneer dryer may be a longitudinal dryer, which
circulates air parallel to the veneer, or a jet dryer. The jet
dryers direct hot, high velocity air at the surface of the
veneers in order to create a more turbulent flow of air.
The increased turbulence provides more effective use of
dryer energy, thereby reducing drying time

DRYING
Part-2
Dryers may be either direct-fired or indirect-heated. In
direct-fired dryers, hot combustion gases from an onsite
boiler are blended with recirculated exhaust from the
dryer to lower the gas temperature.
In indirect heated dryers, air is warmed over steam coils
and circulated over the veneer. Veneer dryers typically
have one to three heated zones followed by a cooling
zone or section. Each heated zone has a hot air source,
fans to move the warm air, and an exhaust vent or stack.
The cooling section circulates ambient air over the
veneer to reduce the veneer temperature just before it
exits the dryer. The veneers must be cooled to prevent
glue from curing on the veneers during the lay-up and
glue spreading operations before they reach the press.

DRYING
Part-3
Veneer may also be dried in veneer kilns, which resemble
lumber kilns. Kiln drying is a batch operation, where the
veneers are stacked with stickers (narrow wood strips) and
dried in the kiln.
Veneer moisture is checked against the target moisture level
as the veneer exits the veneer dryer.
Veneer redryers may be used to redry the veneer that did
not reach the target moisture content. Veneer redryers are
typically heated by radio frequency (RF) and are designed to
handle only a fraction of the throughput from full-scale
veneer dryers. Conventional veneer dryers may also be
used for redrying veneer. When used for redrying veneer,
conventional veneer dryers are operated at faster than
normal speeds (i.e., the redry veneer passes through the
dryer more quickly than does green veneer).

EDGING &JOINING
After drying, veneers sometimes are glued
together on the edges to form larger sheets of
veneer.
This process is called composing. Narrow
veneer slices must be composed before they are
used in
plywood panels or other products requiring wider
veneer sheets.

GLUING
After drying veneers to their specified moisture content,
they are conveyed to a lay-up operation, where a
thermosetting resin is spread on the veneers.
The main types of resins are phenol-formaldehyde,
which is used for softwood plywood and exterior grades
of hardwood plywood, and urea-formaldehyde, which is
used to glue interior grades of hardwood plywood.
The resins are applied by glue spreaders, curtain
coaters, or spray systems. Spreaders have a series of
rubber-covered grooved application rolls that apply the
resin to the sheet of veneer. Generally, resin is spread on
two sides of one ply of veneer, which is then placed
between two plies of veneer that are not coated with
resin.

ASSEMBLING
Assembly of the panels must be symmetrical on either
side of a neutral center in order to avoid excessive
warpage. For e.g, a five-ply panel would be laid up in the
following manner. A back, with the grain direction parallel
to the long axis of the panel, is placed on the assembly
table. The next veneer has a grain direction perpendicular
to that of the back, and is spread with resin on both sides.
Then, the center is placed, with no resin, and with the
grain perpendicular to the previous veneer (parallel with
the back). The fourth veneer has a grain perpendicular to
the previous veneer (parallel with the short axis of the
panel) and is spread with resin on both sides. The final,
face, veneer with no resin is placed like the back with the
grain parallel to the long axis of the plywood panel.

PREPRESSING
The packs of spread veneers can either go directly to the
hot press or more usually they first undergo a prepressing operation. The pre-pressing is carried out in a
cold press which has one large daylight (or opening).
A pack of spread veneers, usually enough for two or
three hot press loads, is placed under pressure at
normal atmospheric conditions.
The aims of this process are to transfer the adhesive
from the spread to the unspread surface of the veneer to
obtain a better glue bond and to develop some strength
(using the initial tack) in individual panels to make
subsequent loading of the hot press easier. This
decreases the amount of degrade due to handling
between spreading and hot pressing.

HOT PRESSING
The laid-up assembly of veneers then is sent to a hot
press in which it is consolidated under heat and
pressure.
Hot pressing has two main objectives: (1) to press the
glue into a thin layer over each sheet of veneer; and (2)
to activate the thermosetting resins.
Typical press temperatures range from 132to 165C
(270 to 330F) for softwood plywood, and 107 to 135C
(225 to 275F) for hardwood plywood.
Press times generally range from 2 to 7 minutes. The
time and temperature vary depending on the wood
species used, the resin used, and the press design.

FINISHING PROCESS
Primary finishing, which entails the trimming, sanding
and upgrading of the plywood after pressing, is
undertaken so as to enhance the marketability of the
product.
It is carried out at either separate work stations, or, in the
case of modern mills, as a combined operation in a
continuous semi-automatic line.
After trimming the boards to the required size, which are
then sanded in machines fitted with wide-belt or drum
sanders so as to obtain the desired surface smoothness.
Damage or imperfections to the face veneers are then
manually repaired by plugging and the application of
patches.

GRADING
Plywood is produced in a wide range of sizes and
thicknesses, although the sizes most commonly
produced are 1220 x 2440 mm together with 1830 x
3050 mm and 915 x 915 mm sized panels.
Thicknesses may range from 3-25 mm, with the number
of plies being between three for boards up to 7.5 mm
thick, to five or more plies for thicker varieties.

INSPECTION&TESTING
It is required to build consumers confidence on the
product and to make sure that it conforms to the
specification
For routine inspection and testing of the quality of
plywood, Indian Standard Specifications give the tests to
be carried out, sampling techniques, the number of
panels to be chosen from a given lot, the procedure to
be followed, etc.

THE FUTURE
Plywood makes fairly efficient use of treesessentially
taking them apart and putting them back together in a
stronger, more usable configuration.
Still considerable waste is inherent in the manufacturing
process. ie. about 50-75% of the usable volume of wood is
converted into plywood. To improve this figure, several new
products are under development.
Oriented strand board is one such new product made by
shredding the entire log into strands, rather than peeling a
veneer from the log and discarding the core. The strands
are mixed with an adhesive and compressed into layers
with the grain running in one direction. These compressed
layers are then oriented at right angles to each other, and
are bonded together. Oriented strand board is as strong as
plywood and costs slightly less.

REFERENCES
1.Principles of Wood Science & Technology-II Wood
based materials. By Franz F.P.Kolmann, E.W.Kuenzi and
Afred J.Stamm (1975), Springer-verlag, New York
2.PLYWOODS-Their Development, Manufacture &
Application. By Andrew Dick Wood & Thomas Gray Linn
(1950), W&AK Johnson Ltd, Edinburgh and London
3.Lecture Notes on Plywood Technology-Vol-1 By IPRITI,
Bangalore (1973)
4.Techniques of Plywood. By Charles B.Norris (1941)
From- the personal collection of Dr.R.N.Kumar
5.Wood-based Panels-An Introduction for Specialists (Ed)
Helko Thoemen, Mark Irle & Milan Sernek(2010) Brunel
Univ.Press,London: From-the personal collection of
Dr.E.Sreenivasan

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