Plywood or Coro cutouts?

Y

yellowdog87

New member
With my kids getting older (not old 2&3) there getting into Disney and star wars characters now. I'm wanting to do some cut outs of minions and maybe a storm trooper this year for them to enjoy, my question is should I go plywood or Coro? I think plywood would hold up better to wind but I like the fact that Coro would be easier to store in the off season by being able to fold it. Also it seems plywood would be easier to paint but just wanted to get some opinions from others that have done this. Cutting shouldn't be much of a problem for either I have a jig saw and my father in law has a scroll saw.


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Like many things there are pros and cons to both. I've made wood cut-outs since I was a teen and I'm too old to change now, I prefer wood cutouts. Wood is rigid, coro unless it's small or 10mm coro, needs a frame to support it. Wood can be cut in smaller shapes, think of a reindeer's antlers. Both are similar to paint; both require primed and a quality paint to last. I don't use a sealer; but that is a whole another discussion. I wouldn't advise folding the coro; one you'd see the bend and two the paint is going to flake off at the fold. Storing a wood cutout is easy because it's flat. Simply lean them against a wall. I have a bunch of cut-outs, I'll guess and say easily close to 50 maybe more, stored under the steps leading to the basement.

I'm sure a fan of coro cutouts can point out why they prefer coro.................but they'd be wrong LOL (J/K). Try one of each, see what material you prefer working with.

Good luck!!!
 
I also use plywood. I use 1/2 inch exterior grade plywood. I put a coat of oil based exterior grade primer on first. Then I use ceramcoat hobby paints. I had some problems with folkart white; don't know why. I like to wait a 5-7 days after the color paints before using exterior grade water based polyurethane. Ohio like Kentucky can get a bunch of rain in December, so I try to waterproof the cut outs as best as possible. I fill the voids on the edges of the plywood with caulk or epoxy. Others have talked about using exterior house paints and no seal coat.

I have some cutouts that have lasted over 15 years using this basic process. I did learn that oil based polyurethane will yellow over time.

I have three new cutouts this year. I learned that the pencil I used bleeds through the paints! This became a problem after my kid and I decided to change some stuff after tracing out the initial pattern. I'm going to try a different mounting approach. I want to use something that can be removed and reattached so I'm left with just the plywood for ease of storage. When I figure this out I will try to remember to post it.
 
wood_guy said:
I'm going to try a different mounting approach. I want to use something that can be removed and reattached so I'm left with just the plywood for ease of storage. When I figure this out I will try to remember to post it.
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Try using Velcro One Wrap type faster to a post or two. I mount my Coro Pixel Candy Canes to metal fence posts and attach them with two strips of the One Wrap, works great.
 
I've decided to go with plywood, it's cheaper and easily accessible. When I get a few cut out in the next few weeks I'll put some pics up.


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I have been very happy with 10mm white coro. I also have a large nativity scene that originally called for using plywood but I replaced with coro. For backing to the ground I use gray PVC over rebar. Then where there is white showing on the front of the coro I use white zip ties through the coro to the PVC. For most characters I only need two vertical PVC backers. I do not paint on coro but rather print to vinyl then place on the Coro. The images I print are traced in Inkscape so that I can scale to any size.
 
DonDuck said:
I have been very happy with 10mm white coro. I also have a large nativity scene that originally called for using plywood but I replaced with coro. For backing to the ground I use gray PVC over rebar. Then where there is white showing on the front of the coro I use white zip ties through the coro to the PVC. For most characters I only need two vertical PVC backers. I do not paint on coro but rather print to vinyl then place on the Coro. The images I print are traced in Inkscape so that I can scale to any size.
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Very cool idea with printing to vinyl. The only problem is that printing large characters would require a print shop and most won't do copyrighted images. Any photos?
 
Coro for me. Black with magnets to affix to metal garage door.
100_2051.jpg PROVIDING IRMA LEAVES ME A GARAGE DOOR TO DECORATE
 
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I don't have any pictures of the characters I did. However I'm working on some new ones for this year. The ones here are from the large nativity I mentioned. Never had any problems with wind either.

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I have been making cut outs from plywood since I was really small and I would never switch to coro. Plywood is strong, cleans easily and IMO looks better.
 
As you can see, there are good folks on both sides of the issue.
I was a plywood fan for years. Our park drive-thru uses around 200 of the plywood variety. We do yearly maintenance on about 1/3 of them, rotating them in the maintenance schedule.

Then I saw a dozen done out of Coro. They were 7 years old, and didn't look older than 1. Now I'm conflicted, maintenance or ...

It is a personal choice and which ever you take may you have fun making them and showing them to the world.
 
I guess I'm not one to throw my hat into the ring since I just buy out all of Boscoyo's stuff on clearance, but Boscoyo did show me that you can insert wooden dowel rods into coro and it'll be stronger. How do you punch pixels into plywood, anyway? Just drill a lot and use a lot of glue?
 
1pet2_9 said:
I guess I'm not one to throw my hat into the ring since I just buy out all of Boscoyo's stuff on clearance, but Boscoyo did show me that you can insert wooden dowel rods into coro and it'll be stronger. How do you punch pixels into plywood, anyway? Just drill a lot and use a lot of glue?
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Was always my question. Yeah wood is stronger, but how do the pixels stay in the plywood?

I have a CNC and cut all my own props, making them out of wood would be cool, just not sure how people are getting the pixels to stay. If you have to glue them in, yikes, given how often pixels fail, glue sounds miserable to service.
 
TheLightWrangler said:
Was always my question. Yeah wood is stronger, but how do the pixels stay in the plywood?

I have a CNC and cut all my own props, making them out of wood would be cool, just not sure how people are getting the pixels to stay. If you have to glue them in, yikes, given how often pixels fail, glue sounds miserable to service.
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I made arches out of 1/4" plywood, drilled holes with 15/32" drill bit and the pixels snap perfectly.

No glue at all.

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Yet another cheap pixel arch

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