The origins of wholesale plywood

The wholesale plywood industry has been around for decades. Plywood is a standard building material and can be found through Wholesale Distributors like USply or in local hardware stores.

If you look around, you’ll notice that your desk, door, and panels are all made from this amazing material. But when did people start using plywood and how has it become such a prominent product in our modern age?

It all started back in ancient times. Historians have found evidence of laminated wood tombs in Egypt dating back to 1500 B.C. There’s also proof that the Chinese shaved wood and glued it together to make furniture more than one thousand years ago. And the French and the English started creating their own versions of plywood in 17th and 18th centuries. That means that plywood has been used by humanity for the last 4,000 years!

When it comes to wholesale plywood used for construction, the earliest records show a patent issued to Samuel Bentham in 1797, which covers several machines that produce veneers.

About 50 years later, Immanuel Nobel invented the rotary lathe. Then, on December 26, 1865, the first patent for plywood was issued to John Mayo. In his patent, Mayo describes plywood as:

“The invention consists in cementing or otherwise fastening together a number of these scales of sheets, with the grain of the successive pieces, or some of them, running crosswise or diversely from that of the others…”

While this patent shows that plywood was on people’s minds, mass production in the United States didn’t start until the 1920s.

In fact, it wasn’t until 1928 that the first standard-sized 4X8 was introduced by the wholesale plywood industry.

Since that time, improvements like waterproofing, setting standard sizes, and establishing wood grades have helped the plywood industry flourish. Plywood was used by the Army and Navy during World War II, and then made the transition to an everyday building material for construction and furniture. Now, it’s become so useful that it surrounds us and we don’t even think about it.

As the wholesale plywood industry has grown, there have been many efforts made to prevent deforestation and negative impacts on the environment. With replanting programs and reforestation efforts, the wholesale plywood industry is reinventing itself to ensure a bright future for their businesses and our world as a whole.

When you think of wholesale plywood, you probably imaging bundles of wood being distributed throughout the country, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Plywood is shipped to countries around the globe on a daily basis and is used in our homes and businesses. With ancient origins, this material has helped us shape our world and create secure buildings, stylish furniture, and astounding pieces of art. We can only wonder, what will the future bring?


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