Poplar Plywood - Safe or not


asousa

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Hi, I'm going to be replacing a buffet table top. I am trying to avoid plywood due to the glue's gases. I have read that regular Poplar is safe and its pretty inexpensive, which is great..but is Poplar Plywood safe? Especially for indoor use? Does it have fermeldahyde glue like the other plywoods? Thanks!

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Surely you don't plan on leaving the wood bare? I would think that when covered with shellac or lacquer or polyurethane, the out-gassing should not be a problem, but I'm no expert on it. I can't think of any reason why poplar plywood would have any different glue than any other plywood, so I'm not clear on why you ask about that particular plywood.

 

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5 minutes ago, phinds said:

Surely you don't plan on leaving the wood bare? I would think that when covered with shellac or lacquer or polyurethane, the out-gassing should not be a problem, but I'm no expert on it. I can't think of any reason why poplar plywood would have any different glue than any other plywood, so I'm not clear on why you ask about that particular plywood.

 

The wood is going to be painted followed by a top coat.  I heard poplar was a bit of a "better" alternative to other plywoods. 

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If you want to avoid urea formaldehyde then you should go to the manufactures website and look for NAUF (No added urea formalehyde) plywood.  Simply knowing the core is made from poplar is no guarantee of what adhesive is used to make it.  I believe that the term NAUF came about because wood itself has some amount of formaldehyde emission and NAUF means the glue used does not add to that emission.  Find out what brand of plywood is available and go to the manufacuters website and you will probably find a lot of information on emissions.  Columbia and Roseberg are two manufacturers that have pretty good websites.  I know Home Depot in my area carries Columbia Purebond plywoods.  You can look up Purebond and see if that suits your concerns about plywood emissions.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A lot of boards that are not NAUF are a CARB 2 core which is a California spec. Some mills use CARB 2 as their base core.  CARB 2 is only a couple parts per million away from being NAUF. Look at the edge of the board, it'll be stamped CARB 2 if it meets this spec.

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