Stainable MDF? The Customer of the Day

[jmowreader]

Oh god. Not another one.

Yes, my DU friends, I bring to you another candidate for retail immortality.

This particular troubled soul presented with a need for "A-C" plywood to make a cabinet. If you want the whole Softwood Plywood Veneer Grade five-minute block of instruction, please reply...all ye really need to know is that A-C is very nice, and it's very nonexistent in the South because Georgia-Pacific plays games with the APA ratings. (G-P uses veneer that rightly should be called A on their B-C plywood, and just doesn't sand it quite so smooth. You can get them to make you A-C plywood, but it's special order, minimum 10 bunks of any one thickness.)

Naturally, I told the guy we didn't have any A-C but I had all the B-C he wanted. "Well, then I guess I'll just have to settle for MDF." Medium-density fiberboard is made from sawdust and glue pressed together under tremendous force--enough force to squeeze a foot-deep pile of sawdust into a quarter-inch sheet. MDF has the fine grain and beauty of a cardboard box.

I showed him a sheet of B-C, he liked it, he decided to get it. I picked up a sheet that had a repaired knot in it and the guy kicked it. "That won't stain very well, will it?"

I asked the man if he was planning on staining the MDF. "Yes, of course. Why couldn't I?"

Did you know you can bend the cantilever racking in a Home Depot by beating your head against it?

[GOPisEvil]

1. Stainable MDF?!?!

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

I blame "Trading Spaces". They're always making stuff out of MDF and they stain it, but I think, in reality, they're using plywood, not MDF.

[jmowreader]

2. There's only one thing you should make out of MDF

Speaker cabinets are just great when you make them from MDF. It is very heavy, so the speakers sound good, and it's reasonably priced so you can put more of your budget into speakers.

Nothing else should be made from MDF. It is not a durable product.

[GOPisEvil]

3. Another reason to buy solid wood furniture.

A lot of cheap crap is mdf or pressboard with a nice-looking veneer. Either spend some money or buy thrift store stuff. I learned a lot of hard lessons.

[LeftyMom]

4. It works great for big foldable table covers for wargames.

Kinda a niche market, but it does work really well for that. The nice flat surface really helps for keeping models upright, and not a lot of strength is needed because the models are light.

[jmowreader]

5. We used to make endcap covers out of it

To make an endcap cover, you just bolt a piece of sheet goods to the side of the endcap.

Everyone except me was just in LOVE with MDF because MDF is so nice and flat and easy to paint.

Well...it's also easy to damage if you scrape against it with a reach truck, which happens so often we don't even piss test people for it anymore so long as you don't bend the steel or the machine.

I was bitching one day to the store manager about having to go around patching up all this fucking MDF--we were using Durham's Rock Hard Water Putty--and he asked if I knew of a better product. Well yes, of course, just put 3/4" plywood on the endcaps and you'll be done for good. He asked me to prove it was better.

We had a big pile of condemned racking behind the store. I grabbed some and built an endcap out of it. On one side I put some MDF; plywood went on the other side. The district manager was there that day, and the SM invited the DM to a "demonstration."

I started with the MDF side. I used one of the outriggers on my crab-steer reach to scrape against the MDF. It left a big gouge. We decided that if that had happened in the store, we'd replace the MDF.

Now for the plywood side. I got our big forklift, which weighs about six tons, and backed into the sheet of plywood doing 10 miles per hour. It moved the rack four feet, but didn't damage the plywood.

We don't use MDF any more. No one in my district does.