Solid wood panels are used to make a variety of parts in the wood working industry. In kitchen cabinets for example, they can be used to make doors, drawer fronts, drawer sides and backs, even the cabinets themselves could be made of solid wood panels.

Most kitchen cabinet manufacturers use plywood panels for the cabinets and use solid wood panels for the doors and drawer fronts and rails and stiles. Furniture is built much the same way. Plywood with fancy faced veneers are used to make the cases while solid wood panels make up the doors, drawer fronts and rails and stiles.

Alright,  what is a solid wood panel anyway? It is made by gluing various width strips of solid wood that have been defected for knots, wane, bark, cracks, stain etc. These strips are usually inverted alternately to minimize any cupping and warping that may occur after they have been glued up.

These rough size panels are made about one inch longer than the required finished size in length and width to allow for any slippage of the strips and to allow for keeping the overall panel square.

The panels can be bought in the rough size or as an S4S (surfaced for sides) and PET (precision end trimmed) panels.The S4S processing is accomplished by running the rough panel through a double sided planer (either knife or sandpaper).  The PET is done on a tennon machine that cuts two sides perfectly parallel to each other. This is done twice, once on the sides and then on the ends.

The end product is a perfectly sized, square, flat solid wood panel that is ready for final shaping, sanding and finishing. Picture a drawer front for a dresser. It is usually a rectangle with either a profile shaped around the edges or maybe some pattern carved into it depending on the overall look of the piece of furniture that it is going into.

Any way, solid wood panels have a multitude of uses and by buying them from a wood supplier that just makes these panels can save a furniture or kitchen cabinet manufacturing plant a lot of time by not having to make them themselves. This time can be used more productively by making and assembling the cases and then finishing the entire product.

To get pricing information for solid wood panels please email inquiry to:

http://bob@harrellwp.com        for a prompt quotation.

See also Article on Custom Wood Products