Dan,
I build cabinets for a living and have learned to hate that chinese plywood. I buy from smaller local lumber yards who still carry the decent stuff. The quickest way to identify the cheap chinese stuff is to look at the exposed edge, even on the stack you will see overlaps in the inner plies, good birch plywood does not do this.
As an aside I was using a small piece of the chinese stuff to align a drum sander the other week (which meant repeatedly removing 1/64" from the face, the trick by the way is that the differrent colored layers let you see when your aligned IE if the color is consistant from side to side, your drum sander is aligned). I found all kinds of junk in that plywood, including what I assume is medical waste (you could see the plastic wrist straps in the layers) odd bits of metal (syringe needles) etc. UGH. I honestly believe their using trash as filler in that cheap plywood.
Even on the good stuff, I never use a factory edge, not only can you not rely on it being square, the edge you'll get from the TS 55 is so much better it's worth the extra time and material.
On the thin veneer, the standard was recently reduced, now all fine plywood has a face veneer that will not take much sanding at all.
For cutting panels, I use a shop made cutting table which is a sheet of MDF with a notched fence on the working side (the fence has a T track with tape attached and a movable Kreg stop to simplify setting up for cuts) the notch is wider the the Festool track and there is a fixed stop on the other side of the table to ensure right angle cuts every time. In other words, a cross cut which I do first is always made along the same line on the table, the plywood sheet slides up to the stop to set where the cut in the sheet will occur.
Cutting up a stack of plywood this way is quicker, easier, more accurate, cleaner, and much much safer than a tablesaw. The trick is that (like the MFT, where I er "adopted" the idea from) it ensures right angle cuts (A tablesaw ensures parallel cuts, which is ok, but you can't get to square from parallel, but you CAN get to parallel from square.
The process from a new sheet is: slide it onto the table (I store the current projects sheet stock on sturdy trestles at the "infeed" end of my cutting table) until the rear end is almost past the cut line (just enough over to square up that first edge), pull it up against the fence (towards me) and drop the rail into place, slide it left against the stops and cut. Then spin the sheet around to place the cut end at my left, set the stop to my desired width for that slice (and usually the next few), slide sheet left to the stop and cut, as each slice comes off (these are usually 23" (cabinet sides, decks, etc) wide and easy to handle at this point) and stack them behind me leaning up against another bench. once all slices are cut, each one goes back onto the table to go through the same process (23" wide pieces get cut to 30 1/2" length for cab sides for example). I never lifta full sheet of ply once it's unloaded onto the "feed stack" (which is where they go when delivered).
Hopefully, there is something in all this excessive description which will help with your cabinet project.
Steve
