I recently tested MDF versus plywood in ten different ways.
But some of you didn't like how I did the water testing.
And so today I'm going to address that.
I've also got 600 pounds of cement and a flame thrower.
You're going to see what happens.
You'll hear a lot of great comments on that first video.
But the ones around the water, some of them really stung inside.
And I think that can sum them up with this one here.
You totally missed the mark with the wet ability of MDF.
Ouch.
Plywood will dry out and not be ruined like swelled up flaking MDF.
And there were a bunch of comments that were all similar to that that after
MDF is wet that it does not go back to the same shape
and is basically ruined, whereas plywood when it dries out is just fine.
So we're going to test that today.
Here's how the first test is going to go.
I've got my three samples in MDF maple plywood with a poplar core
and Radiata pine.
I also have samples that I have finished with two coats of Total Boat
Halcyon Clear.
Now, you'll also notice some measurements on these,
and that is the thickness of each of these pieces of wood when they were dry.
And you know, we're going to make this scientific.
I've got 12 ounces of water in each of these mason jars.
And at the last minute, I thought, why not put some food
coloring in there so maybe we can see the capillary action.
So here we go.
I'm just going to put these in here
and hopefully this doesn't overflow on my bench.
I'm going to come back in an hour and we'll get our first measurements.
Now, the other big issue you guys had with the water test was that
I didn't test the strength of the MDF after it had gotten wet.
And a lot of people said once it gets wet, it just breaks down the glue
bonds of the MDF and when it dries out, it is completely useless.
So to test this out, I've got the same rig that I used last time and it's just
basically a mock up of a 30 inch cabinet and I've got a ready out of pine shelf
and an MDF shelf, and so I just load them in there
and then put 80 lbs of weight on them and see how much it deflects.
But this time is gonna be a little bit
easier to see because I got a piece of acrylic
and attach it to a wooden block
because you need very scientific and accurate measuring devices.
And then I mark the baseline of where the shelf sat with no weight on it.
And then I added in the 80 lbs and marked it again to see how much it deflected.
And so if I put the ruler behind here, we can see that the radius of pine in red
deflected just under an eighth of an inch.
And the MDF over here in the blue deflected just over an eighth of an inch.
And that's exactly what we found the first time.
But now we get to expose these to water and figure out what happens
for the water exposure on these
not going to totally submerged in water because
I just don't think that's a real world.
But what might be real world is pink tiles getting this with water,
putting it on top
and making sure that I have a constant source of water on the top of it.
Maybe like in the rain
or if you had a wet towel that you threw on top of some plywood.
Not really sure why you do that, but maybe you did.
So I'm going to soak these in water and let him sit overnight.
This thing is completely saturated now.
All the water's running off here, and I'm just going to set this to the side.
I will come back before I go to bed to make sure it is still wet
and then that way will have full exposure for the 24 hours.
And of course, I'll do the MDF the same way and put it to the side.
And come back tomorrow.
It's been just over an hour since I dip these in the Kool-Aid.
Let's see what they're looking like.
All right. Looking at these dry ones first,
you can see the two ply was ever really soaked up the water, whereas
the MDF, it's coming up a little bit, but just barely over the waterline.
Now, looking at the ones
with the total boat household on it, you can see they're faring much better.
It's not coming up the side at all.
And then the MDF is look at, Oh wow, look at that.
It's barely even soaking into the face at all on this front part.
I'm not going to go into the gory details right now,
but here are a few interesting observations that I've seen so far.
And on the MDF, it is soaking way more up at the bottom than it is
at the top, and it's just really mushrooming out.
And that's because of those open fibers, I'm sure, at the bottom
and unfinished, ready out of Pine is already starting to fall apart and Flake.
This is kind of weird.
It just expanded and
I don't think this is going to fare very well after another 23 hours.
Pretty interesting stuff.
I'm going to put these back in the jars
and we'll come back tomorrow and see how they turned out.
I think some of these are going to be a complete disaster.
While we're waiting for the water to destroy some MDF,
I wanted to do some extreme weight testing and for that I got the original rig
and I put some gusset on it and I put them all in there with gold,
some me nails and even some screws for some extra support.
And if strength is measured by the amount of glue squeeze out,
this thing should be a awesome.
So I've got my 600 lbs of concrete and yes, I know it's concrete and not cement.
So for everybody who I've already commented,
think to go ahead and go change that, too.
Brad, thank you very much for your time and effort.
I started off with the MDF shelves that had the hardwood edge
banding on the front because that was the strongest one from the last one.
And as I started loading these bags on there, they're 50 lbs apiece
and stacked it up all the way to 300 lbs
There's about 3/16 inch deflection on that.
And I started hearing some creaking in the jig in the setup,
but six bags was about as high as I wanted to go.
And so I took those off and then moved over to the radiator
and it was fine at the 200 in the 250.
But as I got to the 300 lb, this happened, oh gosh.
So if you're
thinking about using 300lb on shelf, then maybe don't.
So took the jig out the bench and I reinforced it with some solid wood plates
and that should hold at least enough for the shelves to break before they do.
Now, there's one other thing that I also had to fix other than the jig.
And by the way, the label now is right side up.
That was really bothering me before I started loading it up
and it took the 300lb just fine, even though it was sagging quite a bit.
And I went back to the MDF
with the hardwood front and I took it all the way up to 600lb
and it was deflecting 5/16 of an inch, but it was really pretty strong.
I removed everything, put the radiator
pine in and amazingly that one made it to 600lb as well,
although it did have a full three quarter inch deflection on it.
There was time for the MDF and I put it in there and I was really uncertain
as I started stacking it up and getting to 400 and 500lb.
It was sagging like crazy.
So I added those last few bags on there
and to my amazement it did not snap.
It held the 600lb, even though it deflected 7/8 of an inch.
At that point.
I wanted to add some more weight and I started having some pretty bad ideas.
I kind of want to just make it fail.
I've got those two dumbbells, but I also kind of don't want to destroy
all my cameras or those things go earlier.
This is bad idea. I should not do this.
Yeah, we're not doing that.
I was pretty disappointed that I wasn't able to make it snap,
and I'm sure you are too.
So I'm going to go back to the store, pick up another 400lb of concrete,
and then we're going to come back and either
this thing's going to hold 1,000lbs or it's going to snap, but I got to go get it.
So we'll do that later in the video for all you data lovers and nerds like me,
here is a chart of the weight and the deflections
per shelf so you can see how it progressed across there.
And the biggest takeaway for me was just how strong that ends
with the hardwood edge banding.
Was it performed three times better than the MDF and the 600lbs
weight and usually over twice as good as the radius of pine.
So if you're going to be making a shelf
using MDF with hardwood edge banding is a great way to go.
All right.
We're back to the Kool-Aid test, and it's actually been maybe 26 or 27 hours. And
I, I can already
tell the medium has not fared well right off the bat.
After drying them off and measuring them,
you can tell a huge difference between the unfinished and the finished.
You can see how much more of that red dye that really soaked in,
especially on the MDF.
That face of it of the one with
the Halcyon is still brown versus the deep red over here of the MDF.
Same on the radiator, much less on the finished and then a lot here.
And then the maple actually held up really well with just the finish on it.
You can also see on the finish one
it really held back the water running up the sides as well.
Now I only put two coasts finish on these
and I know I didn't hit every little nook and cranny.
So if that film finish is not perfect, water is much like life.
And Jeff Goldblum has taught us that life
finds a way.
The other big takeaway was just how much the MDF sucked up.
You can see this is just a mushroomed up.
It is just huge.
So lots and lots of water in there and we'll just going to have
to see what happens when it dries, if it reduces down or not.
All right. Now we've got the shelves also.
And these things stayed nice and wet.
Oh, yeah.
So taking a quick look at these kind of interesting,
you can see exactly where the water is on the MDF,
but on the radiator is definitely spread out
and that's consistent with what we saw on the other test.
The MDF is definitely a raised up,
and I can tell it has gained a little bit of water,
but not that much and it did not go all the way through.
So that total penetration has not been there.
And I think part of that is just because the face of MDF
is more resistant to water absorption than the edges.
But the radiant out of pine may look at the bow on that.
It really has warped, which is what happens a lot with plywood,
whereas MDF swells and it's also soaked
in a lot more on the edges on this one than the MDF.
But those are just general observations.
What we really want to know is the strength.
So I'm going to let these dry out and then we will put some weight on them
and see if they deflect more than when they started.
All right.
So we've tested these against water and weight, but what about heat?
I mean, this is a torture test, right?
So I've got an iron here.
I'm going to crank this thing up
and then we're going to start putting it on these samples and see what happens.
I did some testing on these and I put the iron down
for one minute on one side and then 5 minutes on the other side
on each of these to see what it would look like.
And here's what I found.
Now, after one minute, the two pilots had barely any discoloration at all.
You can just kind of tell where it was.
And the ADF, on the other hand, definitely had discoloration
where you can see exactly where that iron was. The five minute mark.
Things got a little interesting on the maple plywood.
You can obviously see exactly where the iron was.
But what's happened is the veneer is kind of bubbled up all around that heat
so that he got into that thin veneer glue and has definitely messed with it.
Now, the out of pine is nice and smooth because it has that thick veneer,
but you can definitely obviously see the discoloration
and some of the charring and burning on the MDF.
It is also nice and smooth, but obviously it's just a very much more pronounced.
And when I pulled it up, I did get a little bit of smoking.
Oh, oh gosh, I love the smell of burnt MDF in the morning.
Now I wouldn't advise exposing any of these to heat, but
you're going to get some pretty immediate discoloration on the MDF
and on the ply was they can hold up for some short term
but on the long term, especially on the thin veneer plywood,
you're going to have an issue because those veneers
are going to start separating.
And I would say that the radiant of pine held up the best out of all of them.
But this is a torture test and I think we need something
stronger.
All right.
I was having a lot of fun out there, that flame thrower.
I feel like Colin Furze out there or something.
I was actually a little surprised that these things
just didn't burst into flames.
And when I stopped hitting them with the fire, they pretty much went out.
But they are just all charred up and especially the maple,
that thin veneer, it's all just peeling up and crispy
and it's kind of got the crocodile skin on the out of pine going on.
And then the MDF looks like the great salt flats.
This is kind of like modern art over here, but that was all just for fun.
Do not mix flame in wood.
I mean, we were back to the water test and I let these dry under a heavy fan.
Fan wasn't heavy, but the wind was heavy for a 24 hours
and there were some really interesting results.
So let's start with the MDF and exactly what you guys say would happen did happen.
It expanded and then when it dried, it really didn't go back to that shape.
And there's nice and flaky.
You can see some voids that have actually formed in there.
So I would absolutely say that this is completely unusable.
Now, on the other hand, the plywood didn't really
deform a whole lot and really the maple plywood held up really well.
It didn't separate at all the radius of pine.
It did have that part that started coming off.
And it's got a huge warp to it
Now, A great way to think about it is India is like a sponge.
It's going to soak up a ton of water,
but it's not going to really travel very far along the material.
Whereas plywood is more like a straw because the water
will go through the fibers and it will really run down
and it can ruin a lot more of your product than it would with the MDF.
And to recap everything, I have my TPS reports available.
Let's check out a chart from them.
Did you see the memo about this?
So I've got all the samples listed out here
and how much they grew in percent, so that it's nice and a level playing field.
And you can see that the plywood, they took up
only about 4 to 6% after that one hour and 24 hours.
And the water in after they dried
it actually came back down to just under where it was at an hour in the water.
So it's definitely still going
to be a little bit deformed, but not nearly as much as the MDF.
And the MDF soaked up that red water just like the Kool-Aid, man.
It just got swole.
Oh, yeah,
they could see the finished ones didn't produce quite as much as the unfinished,
and that's basically because they have a film
finish holding that water in the same way it holds it out.
And that finished MDF just kept growing and got all the way up to 30%.
So you guys were absolutely right that InBev is going to expand
and then it's going to kind of stay that same size,
whereas plywood is pretty close to what it was before it got wet.
That's when they've been fully submerged.
So let's take a look at the shelves
and see what happens when the water's on the surface.
All right.
The shelves are dry and the MDF, you can see
the water exposure here in is rough and it's a little bit raised,
but not anything like it was when you had it fully submerged.
And I think, again, that's because of the face of the MDF
resists water pretty well.
And so this did not really swell up and there's no separation in the sides.
Now, the radiant pine, you can't really tell much difference,
although there is some staining here and there.
The biggest thing with this one, it just really warped.
And we'll probably see that when we put it in the testing.
And sure enough, that radiant board was both higher than before.
And when I put it in the rig and marked it on the acrylic,
it was actually about a 16th of an inch of a bow higher.
But oddly enough, that apparently made it stronger
and it resisted the weight more and only deflected around a 16th
of an inch versus closer to an eighth of an inch before it got wet.
On the other hand,
the abs actually sagged down a little bit, about a 16th of an inch.
But surprisingly, it deflected right about the same.
They were both about 3/16 of an inch before being wet and then after being wet.
So you're probably okay if you just have some surface water on MDF
as long as it doesn't get in there.
And you can really see that
it's expanded and kind of broken down those bonds inside.
All right, guys,
this is the last chance to break some MDF, so I've got a much longer board.
This one is 48 inches.
And I also ripped up the old test rig and made it into some little makeshift stand.
So I've got the thousand pounds of concrete.
Let's put it on here.
And see if we can get it to snap.
I guess before I start doing the concrete on here, I should stand on this and
see if it breaks.
Hopefully it doesn't.
That would be anticlimactic, wouldn't it?
I think this test rig should be fine.
Mark. The center of this.
Look at that.
I nailed it.
Well, I'm on this up.
A big thank you to all of the folks joining the FTB T Builders Club.
All right. It's 200lbs.
Wow. This is sagging horribly more
if we're not going to get anywhere close to 1,000lbs.
All right, so this is 250.
All right.
300lbs, 355.
Here we go.
400 lbs. Who?
I do not know if this is going to snap me.
All right. 450
00000, Oh, my gosh.
That scared the crap out of me.
All right, guys, we did it.
And I'll show you that here in slow motion in just a second.
But you want to check out some other MDF versus Plywood videos.
You can check them out right there.
And I'm going to go change my shorts.
Mm mm mm mm mm mm mm mm.
You know.