WoodenBoat Magazine #256: 'Marine Plywood: A Consumer's Guide'

This article was commissioned by WoodenBoat back in 2017. The editors there are meticulous and often prescribe careful and specific outlines for a given assignment, and I was thinking this would be a dry, academic piece. But I was encouraged to include personal testimony, which does enliven the material a bit. 20 months or so after writing it, I don't find anything to change. I'd hoped to see someone take a chance on producing paulownia plywood using plentiful domestic U.S. sources, which could be a great substitute for okoume. But plywood is expensive to produce, especially if it's in a "marine" grade, and so far there simply isn't enough demand. Imported marine plywood has always been expensive and will only get more so, I think.