Thread: A question about plywood .......

,( what thickness plywood was this ? and more importantly what quality ) that statement is largely meaningless.

9mm AAAbond, I thought that's what was mentioned.

Largely meaningless? The estimate of average weekly earnings per employed Australian male unit 1981 in seasonally adjusted terms, was $283.90. In 2010 the figure was over $1200. My comment was relevant.

You misunderstood me .

You did not mention specs of the plywood when you quoted the price .
Hence the apples to apples remark.

I can also tell you that I paid $ 82.00 per sheet for that excellent Israeli Gaboon
back in 1986 ! Btw , that was also delivered to my door !

I believe you paid too much

Most novice builders pay way too much for their materials. I pay about half of what most do for their plywood. I buy from a wholesaler who doesn't sell to the retail public and I use a coop so I can use "purchasing power" and larger lumber orders to get unit or pallet pricing, instead of sheet.

The cost of the hull shell in most projects is a significant purchase, but not as big as most think. Again, if you look at the whole project, I think you'll find the money spent on the hull shell materials is less the 25% of the total project. As a project size goes up, the hull shell cost drop pretty quickly. My new powerboat project has over 1,500 pounds (680 kilo) of plywood going into it, but the cost is about 12% of the total build cost.

What seems a very long time ago when i built plywood boats somethings have not been mentioned.
Depending on the type of boat being built there was a great difference in the number of veneers and the thickness of the external veneers from brand to brand.
Gaboon was the ply of choice for any boat when a lot of curvature in the ply was needed. Although it was considered to flexable for some other types of boats.
Australia at one boat made some stunning plywoods and quality was also as good as any. If anyone had ever used Coachwood ply they would know what i mean or Australian red ceder plywood. These plywoods were made to a very high standard and also had good thickness external vaneers. It was easy to scarf 3-4mm thick ply to 60mm long and sand the joint without worry about sanding through the external vaneers. But a lot of the plywood i see today is just awful in comparison to what was available and unfortuneatly it has become the norm.
I still have a couple of small bits of Coachwood i have shown people to what you could get at one time and they are quite shocked as to how good this plywood was. But there were many good plywoods available years ago.
And it was also possible to buy your plywood custom ordered. people Like Bruce Keir i heard used to get his plywood made to order. And anyone who saw Bruce's boats know he was the man when it came to plywood sailing boats.