OSB Plywood for Home Wall?

I'm trying to build my wall cheap! Will OSB plywood be good enough? Would someone who knows about plywood explain the differences? It seems that the grades only refer to the outside layers.

You will be fine building a wall with osb. Just make sure you get at least 3/4in for any inverted part or ceiling. I built mine 5 years ago and it still is holding up just fine. You will spend at least twice as much if you use plywood.

They are both engineered wood products, constructed using similar methods. The main difference is price. OSB (oriented-strand board) is generally cheaper and has a more uniform composition and appearance.

Even though they are both made of layers of smaller pieces of wood glued together, the small pieces that make up a sheet of plywood are still quite visible in the finished product, unllike OSB. OSB is also more commonly used nowadays in residential construction than plywood for cost reasons.

I'd say that plywood would be much prefferable. But, it really depends on how long you want the thing to last.

Then main advantage will be the ripout strength of the plywood vs OSB. The most demanding force put on a wall is at the T-Bolt. Also, you'll have less splinters, rough stops, etc.

Nothing less than 3/4 OSB, if you really want to use that. OSB works well in construction where forces are parallel with the sheet. there's really not much structure to the stuff to hold repeated stress on a 3/8" T bolt, you're relying on the integrity of a small area of glued wood chips to support the stress esp on overhangs.

For peace-of-mind, I would stay with traditional 3/4" plywood (not OSB). It is much stronger, splinters/fractures less.

Don't scrimp on quality and safety.

I would just go with 3/4" plywood: do it once and do it right. My experience with OSB board building our house was that it had minimal strength when force was applied perpendicular to the sheet. It just busts along the edges of the chips. I think you would find that after a year or so, the T-bolts would be pulling through and there would be a lot of random splintering.

Thanks for the input, especially from those with some experience using the materials. I'll probably just do CDX and be careful about making sure that T-nuts avoid voids.

I got some 3/4" sanded seconds that worked out pretty well- they look nicer than CDX but you have to watch out for thickness variations and voids. also the dimensions are slightly variable.

I have built walls using OSB, CDX, and ADX plywoods.

OSB was nothing but a huge pain in the ass as the t-nuts did not hold well into the wood and it fell apart after a while.

CDX is a decent in-between, however be very careful when using it when you drill your t-nut holes as it easily splits a long the wood which has ruined panels before. After time splinters become a issue, however indoors this is usually a good, less expensive investment.

ADX is probably the best and depending on the size of the wall I would recommend using this over the other woods. Additionally it looks better and holds up significantly better. Worth the investment (even though the pocket-book disagrees at time of purchase)

For what it's worth, I built my wall from 3/4" OSB (because I had a bounch of it left over from another job). I've climbed and drytooled on it for years. It's held up very well dispite me and my friends abusing it. I'm sure that CDX or ADX would be easier to work with and would certainly be stronger, but if you want to do it on the cheap OSB will work just fine. Have fun with your build! You'll love having a home wall.

There are other ways to go cheap. Use thinner plywood, 2x4 framing instead of 2x6. My wall is "sheathing" (19/32" IIRC) on 2x3s, and the homemade holds use 1/4x20 bolts. This is WAY too light for big guys hucking dynos, and probably would fall apart in a month in a commercial setting. But for me it has worked for nearly 10 years (of light use).

Gunkiemike wrote:There are other ways to go cheap. Use thinner plywood, 2x4 framing instead of 2x6. My wall is "sheathing" (19/32" IIRC) on 2x3s, and the homemade holds use 1/4x20 bolts. This is WAY too light for big guys hucking dynos, and probably would fall apart in a month in a commercial setting. But for me it has worked for nearly 10 years (of light use).

Agree with all of this.

I used 1/4" shop grade ply scraps to create a couple of ledges in my wall. Backed the T nuts with 3x3ish squares of 3/4 and bent that thin little 1/4 into whatever shape I desired. You can bend 3/4 a surprising amount as well. Most of my wall is just scrap whatever ply laying around from jobs I've done. Everything from 1/4 to 7/8 found it's way in. Spent very little on my wall and this 200lb fatty and several of my buddies have been using it pretty hard for 4 months or so. Of course time will tell but I don't foresee any problems.

I haven't used ANY osb in my wall because as a home builder I've seen that shit in action way too many times to trust it for anything but building mcmansions for morons.

Using a forstner bit will help with the splintering hole issues. Also helps if the bit isn't punching through into space. Lay a board under the hole and drill through the ply and run the bit into this board. Shouldn't have a problem.

there is a reason plywood cost more, osb may hold up but it is much less structural when drilling holes in it and does very poorly with moisture. 

I can't believe the suggestions to use OSB. Don't do it. T-nuts will spin, holes will blow out, and your potential for huge treated wood chemical splinters will be never ending.

Plywood prices are nuts right now, but you might actually be able to save money over CDX or ACX by getting pine plywood or even birch plywood (probably $50-$65/sheet depending on location.

Unless you are building an enormous home gym, you're probably not looking at more than ~5 sheets, so the cost difference in nice smooth paintable uniform sheets of plywood vs OSB or CDX is likely $120 or less. 

I built a small home wall and pre painted by panels in black chalk board paint - it's perfect for marking and erasing routes and would be impossible with OSB or crappy CDX.

In the service of saving money, I think most plans call for more 2x6 or 2x4 framing than is needed. I bet most designs would be fine with 20" or 24" on centers for your vertical studs.

(edit - I didn't notice that the original question is 10 years old - at that time OSB was quite a bit cheaper than decent ply. Right now in spring 2021, it's not.)

No and OSB is more expensive right now anyway because of labor shortage at lumber mills.  Frankly you are probably better off waiting for these issues to get resolved and lumber prices to come back down (hopefully that happens, hard to say with the misshandling of the economy currently by both Trump and Biden).

Everybody, calm down. 

Person who necro-posted and suggested OSB was a spammer of some building supply company from UK. IIRC he was really happy with OSB for his HOUSE building project.  That spam post got removed.

Dr Worm wrote: Thanks for the input, especially from those with some experience using the materials. I'll probably just do CDX and be careful about making sure that T-nuts avoid voids.

You won’t see where the voids are. They’re inside.