An unrelated discovery…
Do you need thin plywood panels that are more reliably rigid with more consistent mechanical properties, more resistant to puncture or do you just need plywood to keep out critters?
Well consider Gilwood … a 1950s invention by a guy wanting to help farmers keep rats out of the feed. Gilwood is a plywood reinforced with wire mesh. I first came across it in an old Popular Mechanics here:
Edit: The link seems wonky, if you go to it you may need to clear search and the go forward to page 100.
Some time ago I finally found a file of the patent (Canadian #563453) for Gilwood.
The P.M. article had a claim that Gilwood was 10x stronger than 1/4" plywood, but from the patent that’s relative to the worst test specimen … as plywood sheets can be all over the place when it comes to mechanical properties.
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The patent includes data from a 9" ring test where they took a 3" plunger hitting material supported by a 9" ring. I.O.W. a test relevant to puncture. This was performed where he was apparently a professor, at Oregon State (then a college).
(The picture in the article shows a different test being performed)
The Gilwood tested used inferior plies compared to the stock plywood (and this was mid 50s plywood, which people now seem to claim was great compared to what we’ve got today but in the patent was not described as good based on the lumber available as had been). The 1/4", 3 ply plus one layer of 23.5 gauge 1/4" mesh was twice as resilient, at over 2000# thrust (and very little difference between specimens tested) than the 1/4" standard fare at its best (750#, down to 200# for one sample … it varied a lot). It was around twice what 3/8" standard fare produced.
The strongest samples described in the patent was for 1/2", 5 ply DF, 1/16" outer plies, 1/8" inner, front ply grade B, back C, and 3 inner plies of the sort normally rejected for making plywood because of defects. It had two mesh layers vs one as before and managed 3,620 psi in the ring test.
In the past I only referenced one file for our current high tech stuff: a paper that compared using 12K carbon fiber reinforced plywood ($$$) with less expensive 3K stuff and was focused on the effect of bending strength, not punch through, and also failure of wood plies.
So no idea how good the Gilwood claims really are compared to state of the art… but it’s definitely better than standard fare and maybe within reach of home made since the pressures described in the patent aren’t that great and there’s nothing pricey about the materials as opposed to carbon fiber.