Another Extera question

[rick_d]

I recently purchased a piece of inch and a quarter extera to use as a plenum board on my vaccum table. The problem is that the board is so soft that the corners crush from its own weight when I pick up an end and it totally fuzzes when I try to machine it. I am wondering if what I have is even extera at all but as this is my first experience with it I have nothing to compare to. I can't imagine this product ever being suitable for sign work as it isn't nearly as hard as standard MDF. Can any one shed some light?

[wooddr]

Rick,

It sounds like what you are using is extera alright. I may not be the right person to reply to your post, but with my experience with extera I sure wouldn't use it for my vacuum plenum board. When I used it on some outdoor fluted and raised panel columns it fuzzed up and bowed so much I seriously thought about throwing the stuff away and starting over. I did manage to save them by applying a few coats of shellac and lots of sanding and then a few coats of oil based primer. It still looks kind of rough to me after all the extra prep work, but with all the grooves you will be putting in the plenum board I am afraid you will never reach satisfactory results unless you like sanding and prep work. I had a few partial rips left over and I tossed them in my dump trailer and swore I would never use the stuff again.

Dirk Dunham