As with most cabinet shops today many of the jobs that I undertake are solid color finishes. Given the state of the quality of plywood as the preferred substrate with voids below the top sheet of veneer, separation of the veneer at the seams, many variations in grain, extremely thin veneers themselves...etc , I have been using pre-finished clear maple ply as the substrate to spray all of my color jobs. This gives me a super smooth substrate with none of the problems that I have mentioned above.
My schedule is I sand the pe-finished plywood with 220 grit to help with the mechanical bond of the primer ....1 coat primer.....2 coats of the pigmented topcoat with 320 sanding in-between. I use Kem Aqua "Surfacer "Primer with 2 coats of Sivam waterbase color.
I do worry somewhat with the adhesion of the Primer to pre-finished maple ply. So far so good.........................anyone else using this method?.........and with what results. thanks for any response on this

Ive done the same thing numerous times with no issue mainly because we bring in UV clear prefinished one side domestic ply for cabs cheaper than we can buy raw and far cheaper than veneer core melamine. The pre-finished is about the best veneer substrate Ive found for pigmented work and the domestic stuff is flat so your 90% of the way there over any raw material (grain raise, warpage, etc).

We cut for another shop who insists on raw ply for carcass material that they spray in house and it drives them nuts that the pre-finished ply we run is most always a few bucks cheaper than their raw material but they continue to run it.

I guess I don't understand.?? In Fl. back in the early 2000's, We were using the pre finished maple ply as a selling point, it was always used for the interiors of all cabinets, and being a UV cured urethane, we guaranteed it's performance as to chemicals etc. It was a great interior finish and cut down on the over all finishing cost drastically. Our kitchen jobs usually ran in the 50- 85, thousand range, for the finest homes in south Florida, how could a water base finish out perform a UV Urethane.??
For our exterior finishes, yes we did both painted and natural wood finishes, multi step glazes etc.
With only the face edges of the boxes being painted, never the already finished interiors.
Is it now the case that your customers are demanding color matched painted interiors or what.?? Help me understand what's going on please.??

The point is regardless of your 50-80k FLA mc mansions (florida is the dog sh$t of construction standards... an utter hell hole) uv cured prefinished ply is sold in such quantities that it is in fact one of the best substrates for any subsequent pigmented finish regardless of solvent or water. You have a pretty much dead flat, smooth, starting point thats cheaper than even veneer core melamine.

I would not be steering my offering based on anything produced in the FLA market. That can be some of the worse of the worse. I know theres quality there (forgive me harold et al) but FLA is not known for anything quality on mass

I do the same thing except I'm using a solvent based finish on top of the UV.

Sand 150, prime, 320, pigmented coat, 320, top coat.

Mark B, What brand of one sided UV are you using that stays dead flat? The Roseburg and Columbia I get from my supplier never seems to be, or stay flat. I assumed it was because it was only finished on one side, so it had unbalanced moisture in it. Is the stuff your using the what the call combi core? It has mdf as the ply directly under the face veneer.

Also, I sure would not lump all of Florida’s quality of work into one basket. I live in northern Michigan, and I have several customers that have their main homes in Naples. The level of work in a lot of those homes is superb. A lot of them have much more expensive kitchens than $85,000.

Chemmy started his post writing that in the " early 2000's " his kitchens were 50-85 k. That would be today 85 - 100 k +.

And I share his confusion re is this a trend? We don't see it and our designers/decorators have an awareness of what's going on in 2 of our country's very higher end and trend setting markets.

So, along with Chemmy I ask: What's going on guys?

Have you tried something like this?

HDF ply