 What the heck is a good way to do edge banding on plywood? Hola woodworkers, Paul Carlson here, small workshop guy. I'm doing some drawer fronts and I decided not to use real hardwood but just use plywood. So it's Baltic Birch plywood, really high quality plywood with nice faces on both sides. And, but of course the only thing is it has this raw edge that looks like layers of plywood because that's what it is, layers of plywood. So I have a whole roll of Birch, three quarter inch banding material. And let me take you through the steps to do this. Let me change the camera angle. I want you to see a few things. So what I do here is I lay out a sanding bar or thing with 60 grit or 80 grit in it, pair of scissors, a little roller, a cutter to trim along the both edges and then another sanding bar with 220 in it. In addition, I have a cheap iron. I would not go into your laundry room and borrow an iron from your wife although that's probably sexist to assume the wife does the ironing. Maybe you do and maybe like our house nobody's had an iron out for several years. But anyway, you can get this for $10 or $15 off of Amazon. I'll put a link down below to the iron. The other thing I have set up is my compressor. Step one, and that's the reason I lay these out in that order is because it kind of helps me remember each and every one of my steps that I want to go through. So my first step is to grab the core sanding and sand that plywood edge. The reason is adhesives work best when they don't have a lot of bumps to deal with when they're on a smooth surface. Blow it off, get all the dust out of there because dust doesn't compress too well. Take the piece of banding, have about a finger or a half an inch or so overlapping one end, put your thumb here at the other end and then that gives you your rush measurement to cut. As long as you've got one of those out you're gonna have to do the other end as well. So cut another one approximately the same way. All right, put your scissors right back in row number two. Take this, put it up on top, grab your hot iron, overlap it here on the edge. And what I do is I pull this far edge here away from me to the edge of the plywood and I kind of then use the heat of the iron turned up to the max. And of course you don't wanna scorch your birch but you want to get all of that glue very soft and well melting so that it'll go into those plywood fibers. Next, after you've heated it all up and this is the time if you need to move it to heat it or reheat it and move it then use a little roller to compress that. So it's compressed down into those fibers. It's gonna hold as well as possible. Next thing I do is I just push down on the end there and try not to get that part super hot with glue. Otherwise when you push down you might stick on the side and then you gotta tear that off. And I push down on the other one and lift it up and push it down and at least with the material I'm using it breaks off real nicely. Then I grab this device which has little razors on the inside it's been designed so that you put it right on the edge of the workpiece and then you squeeze it and then you shove it along the workpiece. And anything that's out there gets trimmed off. Here's some trimming that came off an earlier long piece. So that gets nice and trimmed off. You wanna feel it then, see if you've got any significant edges sticking out and regardless whether you do or don't this is a time to do with your 220 sanding block. Then you wanna go down, you don't wanna push up because you can catch an edge and lift it away and soften it. So I'm using downward strokes to just clean up all the edges. If you leave any little edges that your fingers or a tool or something can get caught on that's how edge banding starts coming up is little pieces tear it away. So make sure you don't have any significant edges that can get caught on anything. Probably this is a case of too much is better than too little. Get it kinda rounded off a little bit and there you go. It's a nice piece of birch on there matches the birch Baltic birch. So that's why I have great big roles with this cause I usually buy Baltic birch to use for my projects, at least shop projects. Well, I hope you're enjoying these what the heck is series of videos. They're all designed for beginning woodworkers and they're just lots and lots and lots. I only have about 30 or 40 so far but little items one at a time on various things that are the real beginning fundamentals that the expert woodworkers don't have the time or don't wanna take the time to tell you about. So this old coot will keep trying to tell you more what the heck is, tips and tricks and techniques for your workshop. So please give me a subscription. I greatly appreciate any comments and any thumbs up. Those are always useful. Small Workshop Guy reminding you you can't stop the waves. In this case, ugly old plywood but you can learn to surf. In this case, put on a nice edge bending. Small Workshop Guy, signing off.