1/4 Inch Plywood In Mm

When nosotros use the term plywood today, information technology is a general term, referring to a whole family of engineered wood products, all of which are produced in panels. While there are a variety of different products that fall into this definition, not all of them fit the description of traditional plywood. All the same, each of them fulfills a specific purpose for which they have been designed.

Dissimilar types of plywood are produced in a range of thicknesses from ane/8" to i-ane/4" thick. However, non all types of plywood are available in all of the various thicknesses that are being manufactured. A lot depends on what the specific plywood product has been designed to be used for. This chart gives you an idea of the standard thicknesses of the near common types of plywood:

Plywood Thickness:	1/8″	i/iv″	5/16″	three/8″	seven/16″	1/2″	5/viii″	3/iv″	1-i/eight″	i-ane/iv″
Softwood Plywood
Hardwood Plywood
Luan Plywood
Marine Plywood
Particle Lath
MDF
MDO
OSB *
ApplePly *
Baltic Birch **

Notes for this nautical chart:

* Also available in additional thicknesses.

** Please notation that Baltic Birch is produced to metric dimensions. The dimensions here are approximate equivalents.

While 3/4" thick plywood is the thickest that is sold in sheets in nigh lumberyards and dwelling improvement centers, plywood is ordinarily manufactured in 1" and 1 ¼" thick sizes as well. Some mills produce plywood upwards to 3" thick for special order. These thicker plywood products are typically used in specialized furniture making, such equally tops for industrial workbenches.

Sheets

Most plywood products are ordinarily available in standard four' 10 viii' sheets, regardless of thickness. Baltic Birch is more commonly bachelor in 5' x 5' sheets, which is the standard European size for plywood. Nonetheless, manufacturers of Baltic Birch, like those of other plywood products currently manufactured in Europe, are gradually switching over to the American standard of 4'x 8' sheets.

But Baltic Birch is not the only plywood product manufactured in 5' x v' sheets; many hardwood plywood products are also produced in this size, especially when manufactured in Europe, for the European market. Although the 4' x eight' sheet size is the virtually mutual, some types of plywood are likewise produced in 4' x 10' and 4' 10 12' sheets for industrial applications. For case, OSB is manufactured in sheets upward to 24' long. The largest sheets of any type plywood that would be bachelor is 6000mm 10 2200mm (19'-8-one/4" 10 vii'-2-five/8"). However, any of these larger sizes would commonly just be available by special club.

Generally speaking, a 4'x 8' canvass of plywood will mensurate exactly 48" broad and 96" long. It is rare to notice it off by more than 1/32" or so. Mills cut the plywood to exacting dimensions, because it is necessary in the structure of homes and other buildings. If sheets were only i/8" long or broad, subflooring would be off the edge of flooring joists, wall studs or rafters in six sheets. The just way to foreclose that would be for carpenters to finish cutting every panel, before installing it, an expensive undertaking.

Some retailers too offer project panels, particularly for hardwood plywood, which are smaller than full sheets. While 2'x 4', 2'x 2' and iv'x 4' are the virtually common sizes for these, a variety of other sizes are bachelor, such as 10"x thirty". These retailers are trying to see the needs of their customer base, marketing panels which are a fit for common project plans.

Nominal and actual thickness

There are 2 unlike thickness definitions nosotros need to keep in heed when talking nigh plywood; that of nominal thickness and bodily thickness. Just like dimensional lumber, most plywood is rated at a nominal thickness; the thickness before it is sanded. The actual thickness is just similar it sounds – the actual thickness of the plywood panels you buy, after sanding. Typically, the actual thickness of plywood is 1/32 inch less than the nominal thickness.

Office of the reason for this difference is industrial manufacturing, where plywood is used in product design. Industrial machinery which handles and machines plywood for furniture and cabinetry can handle material that is slightly thinner, without problem. But when that material is thicker than nominal, it is a problem for those operations, peculiarly joining parts together.

Rather than concerning ourselves that the plywood is besides thin, we should think that dimensional lumber is considerably smaller than information technology's nominal dimension. By comparison a 1"10 4" board is 3/iv" ten 3-one/2", a total one/iv" thinner and ane/2" narrower than the nominal dimension. That makes the 1/32" of difference in the nominal and bodily thickness of plywood seem much more trivial.

The table represents the comparison between nominal and actual softwood plywood thickness:

Nominal Thickness	Bodily Thickness
1/iv"	1/4"
3/8"	11/32"
1/2"	fifteen/32"
5/eight"	19/32"
three/4"	23/32"
one-i/8"	i-1/viii"

Most lumberyards take switched over to list the plywood on their racks in the actual thickness, rather than the nominal thickness. That'south nice from the viewpoint of honesty, but it can be a caput scratcher when you're standing there looking at it and trying to make up one's mind what you need to buy.

The trick hither is agreement what a half inch is in that actual thickness. Since they are list it in 32nds of an inch, we demand something that is almost half of that, or 16/32. What we have is 15/32". If you tin remember that one thickness, you've got it made. To get 3/4", all you practise is add together a half of 15 to the fifteen that's above the line, which means you want something that'southward about 22/32". Equally you come across in the chart in a higher place, we've got 23/32"; and so that has to be the 3/4" equivalent. The other thicknesses fit betwixt these two, making it easy to see what they are.

Delight annotation that even the "actual thickness" isn't a perfect dimension, but an approximation. If you were to measure that canvas with a pair of dial calipers (or digital calipers), you would find that it isn't exactly that thickness. Rather, it will vary slightly, due to the manufacturing procedure.

This variation is adequately consequent in any bunk of plywood, as the whole bunk comes from the same manufacturing plant and is made at the same time. What makes the variation exist isn't the laminating process, merely rather the sanding process. Settings on the automobile and wear on the sanding belt can hands cause those slight variations. To prevent them causing a problem on a project, it is best to buy all the plywood for the project at the same identify and the same time.

Wet can bear on the thickness of plywood products likewise. When the plywood is manufactured, in that location is a certain amount of h2o in the wood veneers. As that sail dries further, the plywood will go slightly thinner. Should the sail be left in a high moisture environment, it will gradually become slightly thicker once again.

This modify in the thickness of the plywood tin piece of work to pull nails loose; not all the style loose, but enough to be noticeable. The utilise of screws or adhesive to hold plywood parts together on a project will eliminate the gamble of the fasteners loosening up from cycles of absorbing moisture and drying.

Thickness in millimeters

Although measures in inches are the near common, some thicknesses are expressed in millimeters, peculiarly for plywood products manufactured in Europe. Probably the best instance is Baltic Birch plywood (sometimes called Russian or Finland Birch). Another plywood product which is typically sold in metric thicknesses is aircraft plywood, a product which was common during World War Two, but not so common today.

Thickness (inch)	Thickness (milimeter)
one/8"	3.2mm
ane/4"	six.4mm
5/sixteen"	8mm
3/eight"	9.5mm
vii/16"	11.1mm
1/2"	12.7mm
5/eight"	15.9mm
3/4"	19mm
1-1/eight"	28.6mm
i-1/4"	31.75mm

When making your selection, you want to avert misunderstanding what the bodily thickness is of any plywood production you lot buy. You can best avoid those misunderstandings, past taking the fourth dimension to look at and empathise dimension comparing betwixt these ii units of mensurate. Too, be careful and keep it in listen when comparison the prices.

Selecting plywood thickness

In many cases, the choice of a particular thickness of plywood is based more upon the convenience of using that thickness of plywood for the work being done, than anything else. Plywood is strong plenty, that it usually provides more strength and stiffness than is needed in a particular application.

Nonetheless, there are applications where the force and stiffness of the plywood is the determining factor in selecting a particular thickness of plywood. Such is the case for plywood structural elements used in the structure of homes. The same tin utilise to a wide range of other applications, such every bit making some types of article of furniture and shipping crates.

There are several factors, associated with the thickness of the plywood and how it is installed, which impact the strength and stiffness of a detail blazon of plywood sheet:

Thickness – obviously, the thicker the plywood sheet, the stronger and stiffer it is
Number of Plys – the more individual layers the sheet of plywood has, the stronger and stiffer it is
Support Span – the farther apart that supporting elements are spaced, the more than of a adventure for the plywood to flex
Direction – plywood is stronger along the "strength axis," which is the axis parallel to the face veneer. That is considering it has ane more ply with the grain running in that direction

The most obvious of these factors is the thickness of the plywood. Only how strong is a fleck hard to understand. While the various types of plywood accept been tested over the gambit of back up options that might be encountered, the resulting data is non presented in a style the layperson might understand. Office of this is because of the broad diversity of support options used in structure and how much that back up affects the strength of any construction congenital out of plywood.

Nevertheless, we can gain some insight into the strength of dissimilar thicknesses of plywood by looking at the requirements in the building code. Floors, which are designed to support a minimum of 50 pounds per square foot, are built out of three/4" thick softwood plywood or OSB. While that l lbs. may not seem like much, we accept to take into account that it is over floor joists that can be equally much every bit 24 inches apart. Then we're talking 100 pounds between any two floor joists. At that span, the problem is flexion, more than anything else. While the plywood could support more, you'd probably feel uncomfortable walking on it.

Roofs, which can be sheathed with 3/8" thick softwood plywood, in virtually jurisdictions, are designed to deport a load of xx pounds per foursquare foot. One time once more, the rafters are allowed to be 24" apart. To put that in perspective, 10 inches of fresh snow weighs near 5 pounds per foursquare foot. So a roof fabricated out of 3/8" softwood plywood, over ii"x 6" rafters spaced every 24" can support 40 inches of snow.

Please note that this is "fresh fallen snowfall." Snow tends to pack downward as information technology accumulates; so if yous have snowstorms sufficiently close together that the snow from one hasn't melted before the adjacent snowfall, the overall weight will be more 5 lbs. per foursquare pes for the total accumulation. For that reason, areas of the state with high snowfall accumulations may require that roof sheathing be 1/2" softwood plywood, as a safety precaution, increasing the dead snow load up to xxx lbs. per square foot.

Plywood for construction

Softwood plywood is ordinarily used in the structure of homes and other buildings. Since homes are typically woods framed, there is a considerable amount of plywood in the boilerplate dwelling. This plywood is used for roof capsule, walls capsule and subflooring. The thicknesses of plywood near often establish used in home construction are 3/eight", 1/2" and 3/4".

Actual thicknesses and plywood products used in the construction of a home depend on the building code used in that municipality. While nigh cities utilise the Uniform Building Code (UBC) or the International Building Lawmaking (IBC), some cities have adopted land or local building codes. Of these two standards, the UBC is older and has to a large part been replaced by the IBC.

While it'southward easy to say that local edifice codes are nothing more bureaucracy run wild, the truth is that some jurisdictions accept determined that the requirements in the UBC or IBC are inadequate to their residents' needs, usually due to atmospheric condition considerations. Roof load requirements for a home built in Alaska, where they get much more snow, are a much bigger issue than they are for Florida. Therefore, the edifice lawmaking in Alaska may exist modified, requiring thicker capsule and stronger rafters.

Leaving that aside for the moment, the following standard thicknesses can be expected. However, you lot should be sure to check on requirements where y'all live, before starting any construction project, just to ensure that your projection will laissez passer inspection.

Roof capsule – 3/8" or one/ii" CDX softwood plywood
Wall capsule – ½" CDX softwood plywood. Still, this is only required in the corners of the building. The rest of the sheathing tin can be Styrofoam insulation
Subflooring – iii/iv" softwood plywood or OSB

vii/8" plywood subflooring

As construction techniques have changed over time, so have the materials being used for the construction of homes. One such change is the increment of spacing for floor joists from xvi" centers to 24" centers. While this meets the technical requirements of the IBC, it produces a flooring which is more susceptible to flexing, creating squeaks and a "spongy" feeling when walking on it.

This can be even more of a problem for homes built with ceramic tile or wood flooring. These types of floor demand a solid subfloor, which will non flex. Flexing of the subfloor under ceramic tile can cause the mastic to come loose of the tile, the grout to interruption out from between tiles and the tiles themselves to break. In such cases, the solution is to upgrade the three/four" nominal subfloor to 7/eight" subflooring (actual dimension). The thicker 7/8" subfloor provides double the stiffness of 23/32" OSB subflooring.

This is a more than cost effective solution than putting in a double layer of iii/four" plywood subflooring, something that is washed during remodeling projects where ceramic tile floors are to be installed over forest subfloors that are only three/iv" thick.