Fineply

A remarkable new form of shop-built plywood can stretch your imagination!

BY JERRY SPADY

The things humans have made over the millennia have depended upon both the materials available and our understanding of their properties. Secondarily, we’ve had to develop appropriate tools and techniques to manipulate these materials. This is true on the grand scale of, say, the Coliseum in Rome, all the way to tiny-scaled items, such as nanomachines. The human scale, where most woodworking efforts reside, is just as dependent upon materials.

New materials are not so frequently encountered in a field as old as woodworking. In fact, most woodworkers believe this area has been pretty thoroughly explored. Still, industry’s recent introduction of sheet goods such as MDF, OSB, and particle-board has influenced the types of objects we make. New adhesives, fasteners and tools can also change the range of shapes that we make of wood, sometimes dramatically. This is the story of a new material for the woodworker’s arsenal.

Woodworking as I knew it changed suddenly on a memorable day in January 2001. I had wanted to make small wooden snowflakes, which are exceptionally difficult forms. For the previous 10 years or so I’d been making shop-built plywood out of veneers, and this particular day I used a vacuum bag as the clamping system, something I’d never done before. While not initially obvious, the difference in this plywood was profound. It was more than strong enough to withstand the cutting and shaping process necessary to produce those delicate snowflakes. I was both surprised (well, astonished, actually) at my success and intensely curious. Having now worked for several years with this material, I am convinced that its properties are different from anything I’ve ever encountered. It looks like wood, yet it behaves in unique ways. I call it Fineply.

I’m a long-time woodworker, but my background is in basic research, so I’ve approached exploring this material from that perspective. Early on in my work with shop-built plywood, before I discovered Fineply, I had settled on marine epoxy as my adhesive of choice. When you clamp a veneer and epoxy sandwich under vacuum pressure, I suspect that the epoxy infiltrates the wood fibers of the thin veneers before it cross-links and cures. While most of us think of epoxy as strictly an adhesive, it is also a plastic, and I believe that Fineply really amounts to a form of “plasticized” wood, with properties of both materials.

1. Shavings from Fineply and ordinary plywood.
EDITOR: TOM CASPAR; PHOTOS: JOHN LUCAS
2. “Hortense”, the leafy sea dragon (2008); finish by David Reeves; 20″ × 16″ × 8″.

3. “Chest of Drawers” (2005); 29″ × 19″ × 12″.

Irrespective of grain configuration, Fineply is much stronger than any plywood I’ve ever used, and this is especially true in smaller dimensions. Fineply is built up in the same way as ordinary plywood, with the grain direction alternating in each layer, but there the similarities end. To give an extreme example, I can plane an intact, or nearly so, ribbon-like shaving from any edge of a five-layer piece of Fineply (1). Commercial plywood won’t yield intact edge shavings.

I’ve exploited Fineply’s strength to create very delicate, three-dimensional figures such as “Hortense” (2), “Chest of Drawers” (3) or “Neuron” (4). Fineply can also be fashioned into thin door panels or legs that are delicate in appearance, yet strong enough to support weight (5).

Fineply is exceptionally stable. Like plywood, it won’t move as much as solid wood with changes in humidity (a structural effect). Recall that Fineply contains epoxy, which in a thick enough film is an absolute barrier to water, both in liquid and vapor forms. So if you apply an element created with Fineply (such as a cattail or a butterfly) upon the surface of a larger panel of Fineply, the resulting structure should be immune to the problems associated with wood movement over time (6).

Fineply may be carved to exquisite detail (7). You don’t have to design around problems of grain configuration. You can also create what I like to think of as three-dimensional marquetry. I’ve made Fineply from veneers of contrasting colors, then carved it to specific depths at specific locations. The different colors or grain configurations result in realistic images with more three-dimensionality (see photo 7, next page, and 8, page 38).

Exploring Fineply’s properties has been enjoyable, to say the least. Since I make the Fineply myself, I’m freed from reliance on a commercial source, even if one were available. I can make whatever type I wish, including curved pieces that are formed over a mold (9). (This piece was made in collaboration with sculptor/turner Ralph Watts.) Parameters such as the thickness of individual veneers, the number of layers, the veneer’s color or contrasting figure, the overall size of the panel and its curvature are all under my control. I’ve used both commercially available veneers and created my own by resawing.

4. “Neuron” (2003); 16″ × 10″ × 6″.

5. “Aquarium” (2006); 65″ × 32″ × 16″.

6. “Elaina’s Hope Chest” (2005); 20″ × 30″ × 16″.

7. “Homage to Grinling Gibbons” (2007); detail.

8. “Emily’s Ascent” (2008); detail.

9. “Venusian Houseplant” (2007); 75″ × 22″ × 20″.

10. “Neural Whimsy” (2007); 69″ × 33″ × 45″.

Working with Fineply requires a slightly different approach to woodworking. Once I realized how delicately you can shape this material, I soon ran out of power tools and found myself reaching for hand tools, such as hand-cut rasps for rough shaping and #2 and #3 (German cut) jeweler’s files for finishing up. Many of the complex and convoluted shapes I’ve created required small pieces that were difficult to grasp in my fingers, much less a vise. And joining delicate pieces to each other introduced a new set of challenges (3 and 10).

I’ve worked with Fineply for eight years now, and haven’t exhausted ways to use it, nor do I seem to have reached its limits. In fact, I’ve deliberately tried to make strange forms that I thought might be impossible to make out of wood. I believe Fineply opens up a whole new range of possibilities in the ways that we can express forms and ideas in wood. It’s easy to make and surprisingly versatile in application. I hope there are others out there in the woodworking community who might enjoy a new material to play with.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this might lead you. You might find yourself looking at jewelry supply houses for the necessary tools if you choose to work at a delicate scale. As you become more adept with the material, your projects may well become almost absurdly labor-intensive (sadly, I know this all too well!). Fineply will likely introduce new problems into your shop, but the challenge of solving them will surely be interesting and rewarding.

Tags: fineply, plywood, techniques

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Spring 09 Issue, Woodwork Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.