Plywood.

Today I started swatting up on plywood for the frame components of my wooden bike. I am lucky that in Bristol there are a couple of very good suppliers, who stock a variety of hard wood ply in most thickness's. I have based my design around 25mm ply, so that is a given, what is not so cut and dry is the wood base of the ply. The one I have my eye on is a 100% mahogany ply. The only problem with that is the cost, £168 per 8x4 sheet. Too much for a test project, maybe if the proof of concept bike works I can make another with the expensive wood. So the question is, what else is out there. Well the main wood in cheap ply is spruce, a soft wood, which although lighter, I have ruled out because I don't think it will be strong enough in the high stress parts of the frame in the longer term. So that leaves other hard wood options. The one that seems best, affordable and made to high standards is birch ply. It is the most commonly available high quality ply, both my local suppliers carry graded birch ply from rough and full of knots to architectural grade.  Best of all, birch ply usually comes from sustainable forestry, something that is harder to to be sure of with the more exotic hard woods. The really good stuff is about £45 a 8x4 sheet, I think this is what I will go for.