[delichon]

I finished building a cabinet for my shop last week. It holds 58 small parts cases from floor to ceiling. I didn't put a crappy piece of plywood on the back, I put three separate crappy pieces of plywood on the back. I used the worst leftover pieces that I though had the structural integrity to keep the cabinet rigid.

And instead of losing sleep over it, I would have lost sleep if I had used a perfectly good large sheet of plywood, and lost the opportunity to make something nice with it. Real wood? Forget about it.

Steve Jobs' imaginary carpenter must be too rich to care about stretching her materials as far as they can go.

[tfandango]

and plywood is probably the material of choice for cabinet boxes, straight, strong, not prone to warping, etc. Actually, seems crazy to use nice wood where it won't be seen.

[shaftway]

Most importantly it's dimensionally stable. As the seasons change it won't get significantly longer in one dimension. This is most important for the back of the cabinet because it has to deal with grain going different directions, so you can't pick an orientation that will just work.

[pilingual]

Your anecdote instantly made me think Woz.