Compact Laminate/HPL panels - suppliers?

rmwarren

rmwarren

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After a couple hours of furious googling I'm pretty sure this stuff is called compact laminate and is made by Wilsonart amongst others.

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Does anyone know where the heck a DIY'er can buy the darned stuff? Looking for nominal 1/2" to use for jigs & fixtures. I'd also consider alternatives if avaliable in smaller quantity and around south Jersey or online.

Thanks in advance.

RMW
 

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Hey Richard - Wilsonart and Formica are the two brands you're likely to encounter.

It's usually sold in rolls. You can get it from Home Depot or Lowes. The rolls are quite large and intended for countertops. I went through my supplier to get a 10ft x 10ft or thereabouts when I did my office. It gets applied to a substrate, usually particle board or MDF, with contact adhesive and a roller.

Edit: Brains working now. You can custom order HPL as well from Wilsonart and Formica. When I was doing my research both options were available. But it will likely come in a big sheet like plywood does. What I did, and you might consider doing, is contact all the local distributors to cabinet shops and see who will sell to the public. I ended up having to create a fake business name to get an account. The distributors can get you any material you can think of and bonus is they deliver right to my garage next day for a nominal fee, like $20.

Matt
 
It appears these panels are used to fabricate washroom/toilet stalls and exterior cladding as well.  etc. I think that if you could find some fabricators that would sell you drops.

Most the companies that make these panels have regional sales reps that might be able to point you in the right direction and suggest some fabricators in your area.

Ron
 
A good alternative to the compact laminate is the paperstone products.  They will sell direct and have a website where they sell off sizes and second-grade panels at a big discount:https://www.greencountertopsdirect.com/budget-panels-list/.  The material is very stable and tough enough to use as skateboard ramps.

If you are willing to have a baltic birch core, their Coverply product is awesome for jigs and furniturehttps://paperstoneproducts.com/products/.  I have often thought about making an MFT top out of the stuff.  Seems ideal for the task.
 
That is most likely Phenolic, if you do a quick Google search you can many places you can small peices of it. It's great for templates but is nasty stuff to cut. Hope this helps.
 
Rollin22Petes said:
That is most likely Phenolic, if you do a quick Google search you can many places you can small peices of it. It's great for templates but is nasty stuff to cut. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
My first though was phenolic too. Machines hard, but also wears hard. Same stuff used on the bottoms of our routers. Easily found on the internet.https://www.ebay.com/itm/174301902147
 
It looks like the typical Phenolic panels that should be fairly easy to source if you have a decent sized cabinet shop in your city. Most of them should have some off-cuts, as long as you aren't too concerned about color.
The stuff is a pain to work with though. It is very hard and dense. Your regular carbide tools will cut it, but it will be slower. Don't even think about trying to drive a screw, nail, or staple into it. You can drill/countersink an oversized hole and screw through it, but not into it. It is actually dense enough that you can drill and tap threads into it, if necessary.
You can sand the edges to a very nice finish, if that is important, but it eats sandpaper pretty quickly too. If you need to attach pieces to each other, it really takes some physical joinery along with some epoxy type glue. Simple but joints don't hold so well.
 
Thanks everyone for the feedback. It is a phenolic panel, as Matt stated Wilsonart and Formica have their own brands, and it seems to come in lots of colors (including solid) for commercial cabinets/fixtures. I just haven't been able to find an internet source for < full sheets, in 1/2" thickness.

Fess Hall is the south Jersey 800# Gorilla when it comes to commercial sheet goods, but they are persnickety when it comes to the "wholesale only" thing. The boss has a verifiable residential design business and they still wanted (several years ago) to have their rep visit and verify facilities, which we don't have.

I'd forgotten about freckle face, thanks for the reminder. They have more ABS/PVC/HVLP and similar stuff, great source but not for this specific use. Also looking into Paperstone, which I do think we have access to via her commercial accounts.

Thanks again.
 
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