[Strawbale] RE Plywood vs. osb for gussets ?

[Dr C Colegrave]

Hello Ken
Happy to comment but I am unsure which published article from the APA you
are using for your design. Could you give me the title and I'd be happy to
have a look at what the design is calling out for.
Kindest regards
Craig Colegrave
Copperrock construction
Central Alberta


Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 11:39:34 -0700
From: "Ken Simonelis" <farmhill at telus.net>
Subject: [Strawbale] Plywood vs. osb for gussets ?
To: <STRAWBALE at LISTSERV.REPP.ORG>
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Hello people, I was wondering if any one would care to hazard a guess about
the following. Come the spring ( it will come won't it ? Been snow on the
ground since Halloween this winter and cold to boot, a very traditional
Northern Alberta winter ), I will be making a small ( 400 sq. ft. ) cabin
combining the techniques of using a wooden rigid arch and straw bales for
the walls. I've used these arches around the farm for making small out
building for the last 25 years and they have stood the test of time very
well so I thought to myself  it would be worth the effort to combine  the
system with s.b. and get that much closer to furnishing shelter directly
from the farm's collection of resources.
    The arches themselves are straight walled with a gable roof ( low slope
), sort of a 'whole house truss' if you will. The specs come from
information sheets available from the American Plywood Association, and
here's where my question comes in. Naturally enough, the plans call for
various sizes of thicknesses of plywoood to be used for the connecting
gussets. However since the hurricane season down in the U.S. did not amount
to much this past year, the cost of osb has dropped ,locally at least ,by
about 2/3's, and having been caught short in the last price spike, I bought
several lifts of osb in anticipation of various building projects in the
near future. Plywood , however, is still way up there in price, so I was
wondering if, for this situation, I could substitute osb for plywood when
building the gussets for these arches ? If it's a dicey situation with the
numbers could I use osb of a greater thickness and adequatly compensate for
the difference in the two product ?  Cheers 

and thanks in advance to any who might shed a bit of light on this matter.