Can you use MDF and save money vs plywood? I put MDF and plywood through 10 tests to find out!
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0:00 The Contenders
0:30 Weigh In
1:58 Weight Strength
3:52 How to Make MDF 2x Stronger
4:23 Finishing
6:20 Wetability
8:59 Workability
11:09 Dust
12:55 Stability & Flatness
13:59 Plywood Storage & Handling
14:42 Fastener Friendliness
16:59 Robustness
18:40 Joint Strength
It is definitely cracking lets see
if it’ll go. MDF versus plywood. That is a question
I get a ton because people want to know Can you save some money using MDF
instead of plywood and will it Actually hold up in your projects? Well, today
we’re going to try to find out. And when you go to the home center,
there are a lot of different Options on plywood. I wanted some high end plywood So that the most expensive one there,
which was the maple plywood. I got a lower end plywood which was ready
on a pine, and then I got a sheet of MDF. All right, guys, here are our contenders
for this versus battle. And any good competition
needs an introduction and a way in Which the how much those bad boys weigh.
And that’s going to be test one. And these are full sheets of three quarter
inch material, But because of their construction,
they can weigh very differently. Of course, we need to get a baseline
measurement of what I weigh first And it looks like
I’m weighing in at 164.2. All right. Now, first up is the one that I know
is going to weigh the most, And that is the MDF. Oh, boy. Let’s jump on here. All right. It is bouncing around here,
but it looks like right around 252. Whoo hoo! So if we do a little math
and take out my body weight, We can see
the MDF came in at a whopping 88 lbs. That’s like butter bean status. Now, the maple or birch,
and I’ll use those interchangeable Came in 25% lighter at 66 lbs And the lightest of them all
was the radiata pine coming in at 62 lbs Like a young smelt Oscar de la Hoya. So let’s
see how they stack up on the scorecard. And we need a way to rank the sheets
against each other.
So I’m going to give them a one
through five star rating, Just like our favorite customer reviews. And these are going to be completely
made up based upon my preferences. So, you know, yours may vary,
but for the weight category and I’m giving That two stars because my back is already
starting to hurt. For the radiata pine
and the maple plie, I’ll give them four stars because,
you know, they weight kind of just enough, But not too light
because you do want some heftier plywood. And the next thing we’re going to test
is strength, because that’s probably The biggest concern is will MDF actually
hold up and will it hold weight? Nice thing about plywood is it’s
made of solid wood on the interior here. And those plies are oriented at 90 degrees To each other,
which gives it a lot of strength. Now, on the other hand,
MDF is a composite material The way this is actually made Is they take a lot of wood
and they break it All the way down
to fine dust and wood fibers. And then they put a bunch of glue together
with that and then compress It under high heat and voila,
you have MDF. So just by its nature, it doesn’t have
a lot of structure or strength to it. So let’s see how it holds up
when we start putting some weight on it. Now, this is just a mockup of a 30 inch
rubber cabinet, which is actually exactly What I have behind me here. So if you’re going
to make those out of MDF, How would they hold up, especially as
you have an adjustable shelf? So I went ahead and drilled some shell
fins in here. I set it up So the ruler would be right at ten inches
to the underside of the shell. So to put weight on these,
I grabbed my old dumbbells Because they’re definitely not getting
any use And I put them on here and I use 20
and then a 40 pounder And then two 40 pounders for 80 lbs
total. Now at the 20 lb level, The birch and the radiata pine
or just under a 16th of an inch. And the MDF was actually right
about a 16th of an inch.
Then I moved up to the 40 pounders and
the maple plywood in the radius of pine. Both came in right under an
eighth of an inch or 2/16 if you’re fancy. And the knife, on the other hand, came in
just over an eighth of an inch. So it’s starting to flex a little bit
more than the others. When I went up to £80,
I expected the maple To have the best performance
and then the radiant and the MDF. But actually the maple was just
a little bit over 3/16 of an inch In the radius of pine came in at
just a little bit under 3/16 of an inch. So it was definitely a little bit stronger
and the knife came in at a full quarter Inch of deflection at £80, And that was definitely
the worst performing of them all. So it’s time to hand out some stars. I’m mean, give the radiant pine
four stars because it did outperform That maple will give the maple three stars
and we’ll put the MDF in two. Now if you are going to be using MDF
for shelving, here is a tip That’ll make it twice as strong. So the secret is to add
some solid wood edge banding. So I have a piece of inch
and a half poplar here And you can also use pine
or any solid wood. And I just put it on the front
with some glue and some 18 gauge me nails. I put it in the test Setup and put 80 lbs on it and it deflected
less than an eighth of an inch. So that is twice
as strong as the regular MDF. So you can convert your regular MDF
from Glass Joe all the way up to Super Macho Man Now obviously we want Our projects to look good,
so our next test is going to be finishing. I’m going to see how each of these
hold up two different types of finish. So I’ve got some acrylic paint primer,
I’ve got a water based varnish, I’ve got An oil based finish and we’re going to do
some stained everything’s dry. We can start looking at it. I did put a coat of light
blue paint on the white. Just would be easier to look at. And I put a second coat of the house
on over the water based.
So let’s start off with the MDF now paint. That is a strong suit for MDF. This paint went on really nice.
It is super smooth. You really can’t see anything
except for the brush marks. And honestly, in between the water based
and the oil based finish, These both are a decent
look now stain absolutely 100% not. This looks disgusting. That’s not even lipstick on a pig. That’s just like mud on a pig. Okay. So for overall for the MDF,
I’m going to give it a solid three stars. I would give it five stars
for painting and one star for the stain. And in the middle. I don’t know. It
depends on how you feel about this. And next up is the radiant of pine. And on the paint,
it actually looks pretty good, But you can definitely see some rays
drain in here, so it is not smooth. So that is a downside. Now, the water based in the oil
based that they look okay. But I just really don’t like pine
even though I made a whole bench out of it And it really looks bad with the stain. You can see all kinds of blotching. That pine does not take stain
very well at all. So I’m going to throw this one in
and actually two stars Because it really didn’t do anything great
and it looked pretty bad in some spots. Last up we have our maple plywood
and the paint finish on. This looks really nice
because maple is a closed green wood And then my water based finished
and my oil based finish look great. I may be a little bit biased,
but I think they look awesome. And I love the green and the look of maple
and even on the stain side, Even though I don’t love it,
the stain looks pretty good. There’s very minimal blocking. Overall, this gets five stars. Maple plywood.
Birch plywood are great for finishing And you may know MDF and water Do not mix very well, but then again,
water doesn’t mix well with most wood. So our next test is wet ability
and that just kind of sounds fun And it sounds better than moisture
resistance. And what I’m going to do
is test the two things. I’m going to test moisture
as it gets spilled on the top. So if you had standing water
just sitting there Like maybe through spill your Mountain Dew
on a project when you’re not looking To spill my Mountain Dew high alert
and high alert Or the other one where it is on edge
to see how much it’s going to wake up. So if you have a sheet that’s
sitting in your garage and water gets in, Then is that going to ruin your material? So I’m going to fill up this little baking
sheet tray PM thing here with water And then I’m going to pour
a little bit of water On top of each of these and let these sit.
I think I’m Going to let them sit for an hour
and see if there’s any differences. Guys I’m going to be honest,
I’m a little surprised by these results. But let’s start with the water on the face
and with the MDF. I really expected the water
to soak in faster than it did, And even at the end of an hour There were still almost all the water
will just bubbled up on the top. And I think that’s Because of that kind of hard film
finish that you get on the very top of it. Now, the radiant of pine,
this one just soaked in that water. I said, It is already gone
and it’s already starting to dry. So if you had a lot of water
that got spilled on there, It is going to get all in. That plywood did not perform very well. Now, as far as the maple,
it was kind of halfway in between. It definitely did soak some in, But it still had standing water
even after an hour looking at the edge. That’s where I expect the knife
to not do so well. And you can see here, the water definitely
got into the edge and soaked in.
But what’s interesting to me is that it
didn’t really ride up. There was no like capillary action
like we’re going to see in the others. So it definitely sucked up some water,
but not as much as I expected, honestly. Now the ready out of pine,
you can see this Traveled way up here,
this capillary action that was a good, I don’t know, inch and a half,
almost two inches that it sucked up. Now, let’s look at the maple. This one also had pretty good capillary
action in about an inch and a half or so. Right. So taking it to the scoreboard,
I did not see this one coming. I thought India was going be horrible,
but actually it’s the best of the bunch. It’s like the Michael Phelps
of composite woodworking. Let me go ahead and give it four stars Because it is not impervious to water,
but it only soaked up a small amount. So you could cut off
whatever got damaged by the water And not be losing too much material
for the rating out of pine. This one was the worst.
This thing is like a sponge. The pine just really soaks up water. I’m giving this 1a2 star rating,
and for the maple, It was a little better
than the rating on a pine. So we will give it a three star rating. Another important thing to consider is
how easy is it to work with? So we are going to test workability. I’ve got a ten inch
square of each of these And I’m going to run these
through a few different cuts on the table. So and then I’m going to root edges
that are next to each other. So that we will have routing and cuts
against the grain and with the grain So that we can see
how well does it hold an edge? Do we have tear out
and what does it really look like? All right. We’re starting off
with the radius of pine. The first thing I noticed is burning here. So we’ve got burning
and burning all along these edge. So the cores are pine
and that does burn a little bit more. And we did have a little bit of tear out
right here at the end.
Now, on the maple, this is a poplar
core product and that did not burn at all. It burned a little bit right there,
I guess. But the rest of it was not burned. And we do have a little bit of a void
here on the one corner. So, you know,
that’s something to think about. But the edges look pretty clean. Now, the MDF, it just looks great. Super crisp, no burning. This works really nice. And we
can put these over, look on the back. And I made two passes moving the fence
just a little bit To make almost
about a quarter of an inch cut So we can see how everything looks with
and against the grain Is really out of pine
milled pretty nicely. The cuts are nice and smooth
and even looking close here Against the grain
there is very, very little tear out. And I believe that’s Because of the thickness
of this top veneer, Which is almost an eighth of an inch
thick. And next we have the maple, which
still cut pretty decent. But again, here on the side, You can see a nice big gap
here in the poplar where there’s a knot. So that’s pretty nasty if you hit that And you can see some tear out
along the lines here. And that’s again, because this top veneer
is very, very thin. So it doesn’t
really have a lot of support. And then lastly, we have the MDF. Of course, there is no tear out
because there’s no drain And everything just looks really good. All right. Let’s hit the scorecard. And India is making a comeback. Maybe it’s the darkhorse. You know, vote, Pedro.
Sweet India machines really? Well. Roots and cuts. I’m going to give it a four or five stars. There’s a drawback
we’ll talk about in a minute. And what’s radiant in the maple.
They both do. Okay. But they do have their drawbacks
with the burning on the radiator And some of the voids that I saw
on the maple and the taro. So I’m going to give them both three stars
that we’re now at the test, Which is the number one reason
why I do not use MDF very much. And we’re going to call this test
Brad’s sanity, a.k.a. Dust. I hate the dust. I hate everything about it. And not just that it’s bad for your lungs,
but I just don’t like the way It feels underneath
my feet. And it’s slippery and I’m sorry. I hate it. And then I’m weird. But, you know, if you like watching
what you’re seeing anyway, Go ahead and leave it like on the video
and consider subscribing. We don’t ask for that much here, But it really does help the channel
but does doesn’t help anything. So let’s take a look at the plywood
because those both perform very similar. So as I was cutting the plywood
on the table saw and you can see Some of that dust kicking back,
but it wasn’t too bad on the routing side. On the other hand, though,
and it really left a lot on the table. And you can see the big dust particles. It’s actually
more like chips than it is dust. But MDF is even worse on the table. So you can see that little cloud In the F dust shootout and it just kind of
got everywhere as I was rounding it. The India dust actually didn’t
show up as much on the table Because a lot of that
was getting sucked up into the vacuum. But you can see As I was wiping my hand on a bench and
things that were leftover are very fine.
And that’s the issue with MDF. The dust is so fine, it gets up in the air
and settles on everything And is just a disaster. And so MDF is just the worst
and I hate using it And I will always wear a respirator. I encourage you to wear a respirator
as well When you’re cutting or do it outside,
which is what I typically try to do. So on the scorecard, MDF
gets a fat goose egg, not even one star. I’m giving it nothing
because it will literally kill you. Now with the plywood, it still obviously
produces dust, but just not as fine. It doesn’t seem to get everywhere
as much as MDF does. So we’ll give it mid road three stars. Now when you’re making projects you want,
make sure you have true surfaces. And so we’re going to test
stability and flatness. I’m not going to go
super in-depth on this one Because if you’ve ever bought
a sheet of plywood, Then you have inevitably experienced
the Pringle’s effect. You get this nice straight one,
you take it home, And then the next morning it looks like
it came straight out of the can. You can even see that
as I was shopping in the store, A lot of that plywood had already got nice
big bows in it. And then even when I brought it home,
you could definitely see the big curves And that is because of the moisture In the pie’s drying at different times
and it’s coming in bowing. Now, the other hand, because MDF does
not have drain, it makes it very stable. So it’s great for flat surfaces. I know a lot of people Use those in speakers and MDF can be great
for woodworking, jigs and templates. So take it into the scorecard. I’m going to give it MDF for stars
because it’s very stable. Although if you do get some water
or moisture, it can start to swell For the plywood. I’m going to have the maple three stars
right In the middle of the road
and the radiator, which is way worse.
That stuff seems to always potato
chip on me. So two stars and help
keep your plywood straight. Once you get it home, you want to try
to support as much of it as you can. And I know most of us Do not have a big open wall,
so that’s why I made this wood rack And then I can lift this up
and put it against these other sheets. And it’s got a lot of support
that’s going to help it from bending. And I would highly recommend
picking up a panel carrier. This is the Craig one
I got from Woodcraft, Who is the sponsor of today’s video. I also have the Wood River panel cart That you saw me use
at the beginning of the video That helps me unload
sheets from the back of the truck, And then I can flip them vertical
to move them in and then hand them off To the panel carrier. I have links to both of those down below Where you can go to woodcraft
dot com and pick them up. One craft is amazing
woodworking and supply store And they’re going to help you
be successful in all of your projects. So go check them out by Executive
Woodcraft for sponsoring today’s video. Now another thing I’ve really struggled
with, MDF, is its ability To hold screws or fastener friendliness. So that is going to be our next test. So I’ve got these little strips
from the water test and I’m going to put A screw into the side as well as the face
to join the two sets together. And I’ll do one without pre Drilling and one with pre drilling
and we’ll see what the results are. Those screw in here
without any pre drilling To start off with. Oh my goodness. And today’s version of mistakes were made. I just slipped off of that
and went right into my brand new bench And just made a huge hole in it
because it is soft. Fine.
Oh well, I needed some battle scars,
all right? I just got them all screwed together. Let’s take a look at the results
and we’ll start off with the MDF. So I started off with the screw
with no pre drilling and as expected There was a big crack and it split
all through the side with the pilot hole. This one did crack a little bit, But I thought it might have been
because the crack that was already there. So I flipped it over and pre
drilled another one And there is a small little crack there. So there were still some cracking
with the pilot hole. Now, as far as the face goes, this was
without a pilot hole and this was width. So I was actually surprised the one
without the pilot hole was just fine. It didn’t mushroom up or anything. Next up is the maple plywood. And this was the one with no pre drill
and it did split the wood a little bit. But once I did the pre drill,
it was just fine looking at the face. This was no pre drilling
and this was with pre drilling. They both turned out very nice. And then lastly, the radiator
on this one again Without the pre drilling,
we had a nice little split there And then with it it was very clean
and same type thing on the back Side as the maple. The no pre drilling
had a little bit of mess around it, But the counter sink
and the pre drill looked great. So taking it to the scorecard
with the induction like it Screwed with your screws
too much splitting here. I’m going to give that a two star review. And for the plywood please
both perform similarly. So I’ll give the radiator
and the maple four stars. That was not very often that you’re going To be just driving screws straight
into the edge of a board. But it will happen
when you’re doing a connection And making something
like a cabinet or a drawer. So we’re going to test the joint strength
in just a minute.
And before we test the joint strength,
I want to do one more test. I’ve been known to drop pieces of wood
as I’ve been going around the shop Or as I’m assembling it. So I want to check robustness, but
sometimes it’s nice to have your materials Like Rocky Balboa just taking hits from
Dolph Lundgren all day long. So it’s going to be a pretty simple one. I’m going to hammer, I’m
going to hit the corner And the face And see what kind of dents we get. Oh, all right. Let’s check out the results
and we’ll start with the maple. So I’ll start with that corner hit. And man, it
just really separated this veneer here off Because that veneer is so thin. But right here, check this out. Hitting it on the face
fully punctured that super thin veneer. And that would be a total replacement
right there. All right. Moving over to the radius of pine,
this one fared actually way better. That Dent didn’t go quite as hard. And on the face here,
it just dented it in. And that, again, I think, is
because of that super thick veneer. It just kind of compressed that wood
instead of breaking through it. And lastly, we have the MDF. I hit that corner and again,
this started splintering off. So did start separating a bit in the face. There’s definitely a mark here
that that’s going to be a big issue. All right. Let’s hit the scorecard. And I’m going to start
with the radiant of pine, Giving this one five stars. And basically these layers are just So thick,
it pretty much acts like solid wood. And next up is the MDF. And because it is a compressed product,
It can take a blow pretty good,
even though on the corners not so hot. Look in this one before and for the maple
I was a bit surprised I thought is going to be better
because of the thin veneer. I’m going to have to give this 1a3
because it just Can’t really stand up to much abuse
and that thin layer of veneer. And this last test
is going to be a cool one Because we’re going to be testing
joint strength And not the Snoop Dogg kind either. So I’ve got two examples of
just a 90 degree joint for the first one. I’m just using a standard little butt
joint with screws and glue. But for the other one, I want to rely on the strength of the wood
and the glue bond alone. So I cut some Myers and glue up
these little minor joints here, These dried overnight,
and everything looks pretty strong. So we’re going to find out how strong
they actually are. I’m going to be using the £40 dumbbells
and I’ll use 40 And then double that up to 80. And so I don’t have to try
to balance them. I made a little jig here. I’m really excited
to see how this is going to turn out Because honestly, I don’t know
if this MDF is going to hold up, But before we do it,
let me know in the comments. What do you want me to test next? What are the things
that you guys are interested in? I’d love to do more of these.
Let’s jump in. All right. I’ll spare
you guys from watching all of them. But spoiler, they all held up
the 40 was no issue at all. When I started to put the £80 on there,
I thought I heard some creaking. But I think I may have Just been hearing the tacky paint
and the weight kind of shifting on that. So it was making a little, little bit of A technical sound. So clearly these can all hold £80. So let’s double that
And go 164. So this could be a horrible idea,
but I’m just going to stand on the bench Because it’s going to be way
easier to shoot. I’ve got the other camera down here
for the close up. Really? Don’t tell Susan this time. She is not out here. Oh, I’m actually kind of second
guessing myself now, but you know what We’re just going to do well, Okay. I could definitely feel it. Flexing,
right? Well, I mean, all right. That August, the ingrain
glue joint did not do very well. All right. So here goes the maple. So I can already hear it cracking. Oh, it is definitely cracking. We’ll see
if it’ll go my karate kid up here. There’s a lot of Cracking going on in there,
but it did not fail. And one for the maple. All right, here goes the MDF. I think this one’s going to go fast. Oh, yeah. I didn’t even get my foot off the ground
on that one. Just that injuring glue joint. Didn’t do very well in the screws,
just pulled it right out. I switch over now and go to the Myers
and we’ll start off With the radius of pine. Wow. Ready on the pine divider. Minor held up. I’ll do the maple. Gosh, that doesn’t sound good. Oh, You can see here, It was actually the material
that failed in that glue joint did hold.
That’s really interesting. Okay. And finally,
we’re going to go with the MDF, See if I can even get any weight on it. Oh, I can already hear it. Go on. Got up on my tiptoe And there we go. That one just kind of separated. There’s really no grain to it. So not so surprising. All right. Let’s take it to the scorecard then. Number, start with the low end of the MDF. Now I’m only going to give this two stars. And even though it did hold the £80 When I started stepping on it, it
failed way faster than the other two did. Now, on the plywood, I’m Giving them both four stars
because they each had one That survived all the way
past my body weight. And I actually did test
the two that survived a failure. I held two £40 dumbbells, stepped on it
and they snapped. After all the testing, I have tabulated up
the fake Internet points And we do have a winner. I will tell you that Media performed a lot
better than I thought it would, And there are definitely
some use cases for it out there. But the winner coming in with an average
3.4 star rating is the maple plywood. And that is definitely
my go to choice out there. Now, coming in second place
was really out of pine at 3.3 stars And pulling up the back was MDF with 2.7. So my MDF actually stands
for might do fine, but for me It’s major dust fiasco. I still hate it.