Grade calls before the order goes in
Marine, structural, shuttering or a plain interior board: the notes spell out which glue line and veneer class suits wet work, load-bearing shelving or a formwork panel that only has to survive a few pours.
What teams actually send us, and what comes back
Shopfitting crews, kitchen installers and small joinery shops use these notes differently from weekend builders. The images below are the kind of material that lands in the inbox: edge shots, cut lists, and boards that failed on site. Each one gets worked through with the same questions asked first.
Delamination on the edge
A Gauteng shopfitter sent this after a stack sat under a leaking awning for a week. The face looked fine; the glue line told the real story. We check bond type, storage and how the sheet was cut before blaming the supplier.
A cut list that nearly worked
Kitchen carcass run, six units, one 2440 x 1220 sheet. Grain direction was ignored on the first pass, so two sides ended up mismatched. The redrawn plan kept offcuts at usable sizes instead of trimming them down to nothing.
Sealing before the coast wins
KZN humidity moves fast through unsealed edges. This panel was sealed within an hour of cutting, then banded. Small habit, but it is the difference between a flat door in March and a cupped one by June.