Re: Where do I get a beam? *PICS*
William Duffield, on the Cohansey
>Here are some ideas, a bit long and rambling, perhaps:
First, a glu-lam beam, maybe?
I built a whole bench, top and base, out of two of these glued-up structural beams of Norway Spruce. They are about 5" x 15" in cross section. It only required two 7' lengths, match jointed, and a bunch of glue and clamps, to make the whole top, with the exception of the front face and vise jaw, for which I used hard maple.
A planing beam would be much simpler than this.
Beams commonly available in the U.S. would be of different dimensions, but you shouldn't have any trouble finding something appropriate.
Other, even higher tech, beams are glued up from components of OSB (Oriented Strand Board) and smaller dimensional lumber. These look like particle board I-beams, and are much lighter than the solid wood versions, but just as stiff. You might want to glue a hardwood facing board to the top surface to work on. It seems that these structural beams come in standard lengths, and if the particular span of the building the beam will be supporting is somewhat shorter than the next longer available length, the contractor may have several feet of offcut that he might rather give to you than pay to have dumped in a landfill.
Another option is to contact a sawmill. I built a sign post for a tavern, in 18th Century colonial style, like you might find at Williamsburg, and needed some strong, rot-resistant wood for the post and frame. Groff and Groff cut me some 6x6 and 4x4 posts to order from a black locust log that was on their lot. A couple of these ary lying behind the Spruce in the first photo.
In both cases, the stock was at the right price. It should be a lot easier for you to reflatten the top of a softwood planing beam as it seasons to the conditions in your shop, than the top of a hard maple workbench.
Both of these sources provided stock that was less than optimally seasoned, and the beams experienced some checking, shrinking and other wood movement as they dried. I could have minimized this in the workbench if had sealed all the endgrain surfaces of the glu-lam with Anchorseal as I cut them to length.
I'm not suggesting black locust for your beam, but you might be surprised at the variety of thick stock that is available at a local sawyer, for the price of making four cuts on their sawmill. A tree downed by a storm can easily be transformed into a beam by someone with a portable bandsaw mill or even an Alaskan chainsaw mill. A friend of mine a few houses down is restoring a 17th century house that had extensive termite damage. He bought some white oak logs and is turning them into square cross section beams mostly with an adze. If that's too primitive, you might want to find someone to help you saw a log into a beam using a pit saw.