# Alternative to thin plywood - thin hard plastic?



## bobbotron (Jan 7, 2010)

Bear with me on this one.  

I'm making a wooden framed baby gate to separate two dogs (long story) in our house that don't get along great. I'm making the frame out of pine, and was planning on using 3mm (roughly 1/8") thick ply wood to fill in the frame. I bought some nice 3mm birch plywood, but it's a little heavy for this, as keeping the weight of the frame down is important. I was thinking a thin hard sheet of some kind of opaque plastic would also work, but I'm not sure where to source such plastic. It would have to be about 2'x3' per sheet, and something like the hard plastic from a plastic binder.

I'm definitely considering going with the plywood since I have it, but I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts on where I could find a thin plastic sheet that would work for this project.


----------



## bobj3 (Jan 17, 2006)

Hi Rob

Not sure if you have the Big Box stores (HD/Lowes ) in Canada but hey have racks of it and some great deals in the back of the store at the table saw ,in the rack of cut offs also at ACE hardware but it's very high price and no cut offs that I know about..


===



bobbotron said:


> Bear with me on this one.
> 
> I'm making a wooden framed baby gate to separate two dogs (long story) in our house that don't get along great. I'm making the frame out of pine, and was planning on using 3mm (roughly 1/8") thick ply wood to fill in the frame. I bought some nice 3mm birch plywood, but it's a little heavy for this, as keeping the weight of the frame down is important. I was thinking a thin hard sheet of some kind of opaque plastic would also work, but I'm not sure where to source such plastic. It would have to be about 2'x3' per sheet, and something like the hard plastic from a plastic binder.
> 
> I'm definitely considering going with the plywood since I have it, but I was wondering if you guys had any thoughts on where I could find a thin plastic sheet that would work for this project.


----------



## Cassandra (Mar 15, 2006)

Hi Rob:

Being a cheapskate, I would go with what I have on-hand. Especially since the big boxes tend to charge quite a bit for plastics. If you want to go with plastic, I would suggest contacting companies (little boxes?) that supply plastics as a specialty.

Bobj3: Yes, Canada has HD, Lowes, Rona, Home Hardware, and others. Not aware of Ace Hardware in Canada, though.

Cassandra


----------



## bobbotron (Jan 7, 2010)

Cassandra said:


> Hi Rob:
> 
> Being a cheapskate, I would go with what I have on-hand. Especially since the big boxes tend to charge quite a bit for plastics. If you want to go with plastic, I would suggest contacting companies (little boxes?) that supply plastics as a specialty.
> 
> ...


Thanks Bob and Cassandra! I think I'll try to make it work with the plywood, and see how that goes. I'm putting the frames together with dowels, I think I'll test fit everything without glue first, and see how it is weight wise. Hrm. Basically, I don't want it to be too obnoxious to move around, and so heavy it will fall out of position.


----------



## kp91 (Sep 10, 2004)

Bob,

I'm thinking of using the plastic lattice panels, lightweight and looks good, not too bad of a price.


----------



## andysden (Aug 9, 2011)

where are you located I have white plexi that could work Andy


----------



## bobbotron (Jan 7, 2010)

So the plywood seems like it wont be too heavy - I should be gluing the two panels together tonight. This whole project has taken a lot longer than I expected, the foul weather and long set up and tear down times associated with my shop right now are really slowing things down.  I'll post some photos of the project when I'm done.


----------



## bobbotron (Jan 7, 2010)

So I'm just about done now, here's a photo of what it looks like. The two panels can be adjusted for width, and the bar on the right is spring loaded to hold it between two walls. It works pretty well, and isn't too heavy. I've glued some polyurethane foam to the spring loaded part to protect the paint. I think the whole thing looks a little unrefined (read ugly), but it's quite functional.  I think if I had made it out of wooden slats it would have looked a lot better, but this is better for what we need it for.


DIY dog gate by bobbotron1, on Flickr


----------



## pinealservo (May 18, 2012)

Sounds like you found a reasonable solution. But in the future, there are a couple of other things you might consider. There's a lightweight plastic material you can generally find in Lowes/Home Depot in the signage section called Coroplast. It's like a corrugated cardboard box material except plastic instead of paper. They generally have pre-printed signs made of it as well as some plain white stuff in a variety of sizes. It bends somewhat easily along the corrugations, but it would be plenty sturdy inside a frame like that and definitely way lighter than a similar thickness of plywood. Best of all, it's cheap!

Another alternative is to look for a local plastic shop. On the west coast, TAP Plastics has a lot of retail stores, for example, but there's probably a similar store near you if you are elsewhere. You can pick up various sheets of different plastics there. Expanded PVC would be a good one for a project like that, as it's lower-density than standard PVC so it's a bit lighter.


----------



## wbh1963 (Oct 11, 2011)

pinealservo said:


> Sounds like you found a reasonable solution. But in the future, there are a couple of other things you might consider. There's a lightweight plastic material you can generally find in Lowes/Home Depot in the signage section called Coroplast. It's like a corrugated cardboard box material except plastic instead of paper. They generally have pre-printed signs made of it as well as some plain white stuff in a variety of sizes. It bends somewhat easily along the corrugations, but it would be plenty sturdy inside a frame like that and definitely way lighter than a similar thickness of plywood. Best of all, it's cheap!
> 
> Another alternative is to look for a local plastic shop. On the west coast, TAP Plastics has a lot of retail stores, for example, but there's probably a similar store near you if you are elsewhere. You can pick up various sheets of different plastics there. Expanded PVC would be a good one for a project like that, as it's lower-density than standard PVC so it's a bit lighter.


Hello Levi,

Welcome to The Router Forums. Thank you for sharing your ideas with us.


----------



## bobbotron (Jan 7, 2010)

pinealservo said:


> Sounds like you found a reasonable solution. But in the future, there are a couple of other things you might consider. There's a lightweight plastic material you can generally find in Lowes/Home Depot in the signage section called Coroplast. It's like a corrugated cardboard box material except plastic instead of paper. They generally have pre-printed signs made of it as well as some plain white stuff in a variety of sizes. It bends somewhat easily along the corrugations, but it would be plenty sturdy inside a frame like that and definitely way lighter than a similar thickness of plywood. Best of all, it's cheap!
> 
> Another alternative is to look for a local plastic shop. On the west coast, TAP Plastics has a lot of retail stores, for example, but there's probably a similar store near you if you are elsewhere. You can pick up various sheets of different plastics there. Expanded PVC would be a good one for a project like that, as it's lower-density than standard PVC so it's a bit lighter.


Thanks for the suggestion Levi! I'm quite familiar with coroplast from other projects. A guy at a non profit bike shop I volunteer for uses coroplast for all kinds of things. I considered it for this, but decided against it, as I didn't think I'd like the look.

If the dogs ever break this gate, I think I'll try to redo it with coroplast. It would be lighter, and plenty rigid inside a frame, as you say.


----------

