Among many current industrial kinds of wood like MDF, MFC, … Plywood is one of the familiar manufactured wood materials widely used in most fields.
However, there are many people who still do not know about this kind: where it comes from, what is the history of plywood, … . Let's find out with us below in this article.
Plywood is a flat board of standard size and thickness, made by laminating slices from the natural wood log stacked on top of each other (these layers are called veneers) by a special glue, with high durability.
The basic structure of a plywood panel consists of 3 main parts:
- The core: includes veneers (made from natural wood like pine, acacia, eucalyptus, or mixed hardwood veneers ...)
- The adhesive: helps to attach the core layers.
- Surface: veneer or other materials to be laminated on the surface of the plywood board. Depending on the standards and quality of the output products, the factory will use different types of natural wood and glue for production.
Plywood structure (Source: Internet)
In order to have the modern, friendly, and easy-to-use structure and shape today, plywood has had to go through many stages.
The development of the plywood industry benefited from the invention and application of the veneer peeling machine.
Around 3500 BC, archaeologists found the first traces of plywood in the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh.
About more than 1500 years ago, humans used thin layers of wood as a construction material. Later, the Greeks and Romans used this technique to produce furniture and other decorative objects.
About 1000 years ago, the Chinese also knew how to thin wood and glue them together.
In the 1600s, the art of decorating furniture with thin pieces of wood was known as veneering, and these thin boards themselves were called veneer itself.
Until the late 1700s, veneer sheets were cut entirely by hand.
Plywood (Source: Internet)
In 1797, Samuel Bentham, an Englishman, built a machine for the production of veneer and applied for a patent. In this registration he described the concept of gluing multiple layers of veneers with glue to form a thicker board, these were the first descriptions of what we now call plywood.
About 50 years later, Immanuel Nobel, the father of the famous scientist Alfred Nobel, realized that bonding thin layers of natural wood together would create a material with extremely good durability.
By 1905, the first plywood appeared at the Lewis $ Clark Fair.
As the demand for plywood increased, a number of companies began to manufacture plywood, not only for home interiors but also for use in trains, buses and airplanes.
In the 1890s, the quality of plywood was greatly improved, the market gradually opened, from which plywood production developed rapidly, many plywood factories were born.
In 1928, the first standard size 4 ft x 8 ft (1.2 m x 2.4 m) plywood board was introduced in the United States for use as a general building and furniture material.
In the following decades, improved adhesives and new manufacturing methods allowed plywood to be used for a wide variety of applications.
Today, plywood seems to be present in all areas of life. The main applications of this wood are furniture, aircraft, ships, trains, automobiles, construction and packaging boxes. Plywood wood has an advanced production process, which is pressed under high pressure and heat, so it is very quality and ensures safety during use.
The use of plywood instead of sawn timber is becoming the trend of the times, not only meeting the needs of convenience, high aesthetics, economical cost but also an effective way to protect natural resources.
Above are some basic information about Plywood. Hope this article helps you get an overview of this product. FOMEX GROUP