[AdamHeard]

A plywood bellypan is easily rattle-canned black, and no one would ever know it's wood.

The wood we use is a 5 ply baltic birch at 6mm thick. It's density is .025 lb/in^3.

For a structural bellypan two things are happening load wise.

1) Shear loads are being transferred corner to corner.
2) frame torsionally loads are reacted.

Most reasonable materials easily satisfy #1 if attached properly. The second is harder, and is one of the advantages of the plywood (over the garolite) due to stiffness. The increase in stiffness mainly comes from the much greater thickness.

We like the wood because it's so easy to work with, and meets the performance specs we need. The garolite works, but is much harder to get cut how we need and costs far more.