Review Birch Plywood

The history of plywood

Most of us hardly ever think about how long-ago things and phenomena around us entered our daily live. We use them every day completely unaware of their rich and interesting history.

For example, plywood. This material was invented a great while ago. The first plywood sheets were created in the 15th century BC in ancient Egypt. In Egypt, Greece and Rome, it was used in decoration works. Archaeologists even found a casket decorated with plywood plates. Creation of such material was caused by the high cost of wood in many countries.

In the XIV century, the first plywood furniture was made in France. Several centuries later due to the construction and furniture boom in Europe and colonial America more advanced plywood production technologies were required – manual methods of rotary peeling and veneer gluing did not keep up with the increasing demand.
In the first half of the XIX century, during the European Industrial Revolution, veneer processing machines with the same principle of operation were invented simultaneously in several countries (England, Germany, France). Samuel Bentham, English engineer and inventor, created several machines for industrial veneering of wood and an assembly for automatic gluing of veneer.

In 1819, in Russia, Professor Fischer developed a method for producing faced plywood by peeling.
Already in the second half of the XIX century, plywood production became mass all over the world and the leaders in this field were England and Russia – the countries with the largest reserves of various varieties of wood. The first enterprise for the mass production of veneer in the Russian Empire was the Luther plant, located in Revel (now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia).

A significant part of the plywood was then applied in aviation, the quality and quantity of which was growing rapidly, and therefore more and more new capacities were required for the production of plywood.

In 1928, a standard of high-quality plywood sheet was created - 4x8 feet or 120x240 centimeters. However, the standards of plywood sheet thickness have not been established so far and therefore now on sale there is a plywood of almost any thickness.
The development of the chemical industry improves the production of plywood: new gluing materials appear and new grades of plywood are being developed. Nowadays plywood is applied in various fields such as engineering, aircraft construction, shipbuilding, car building, construction and decoration works, furniture production, creation of musical instruments, packaging and toys. Plywood products are now aesthetically attractive, lightweight, safe and high-quality materials.