Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Bob Hackett


>You are not alone in your disappointment.

From what I understand the pressure treated lumber in most Borgs is supposed to be SYP and is the Lowes and Home Depot up here are any indication then the only good thing about thier lumber is that it`s only slightly less crappy than the local lumberyard(recently bought by a chain but keeping the same local name) who stores thier PT in the open so it`s always soaking wet.

My advice would be to go to a small time local sawmill(you`d be surprised how many there are even in close to urban areas).If you can`t locate one by going thru the local guild or an area craftsman then look at the Woodmiser site.They list names and contact info for the owners of thier rigs by area.

Around here I can buy just about any unfigured local hardwood for about $1-$1.50 a board foot,air dried.

Most sawmill owners will know how to put you in touch with a kiln too.Surprising what these guys have laying around unclaimed that they`ll let you have for cheap.

Mainely,Bob

Its construction lumber...

John in NM


>It's going to have knots. If you want knot free, you have to pay a premium for prime fir or something like that. Maybe moulding+btr grade if they have it. I've recently bought a lot of 2x lumber, and been somewhat amazed at how variable the grading is. Some boards are stamped #1 when I can't see any difference between them and a #2, and sometimes boards stamped #2 look more like #1's! In general (around here anyhow) much of the home center lumber isn't really worth buying. I've gotten better quality at both huge wholesalers and a little mom & pop yard. It's all a matter of going and looking the lumber over, and in some cases talking to the buyer. I bought some of the best 2x4's I've seen in years at a small yard where the buyer knew that local pine from Arizona would be dryer and straighter than fir shipped from the elsewhere- about the only advantage to this 5 year drought we're in here.

All that said, I still like Bob's advice. Even if you just want a pine top for your bench, look for a sawmill, they may have some nice roughsawn pine that would be much better to use than douglas fir. Personally, doug fir would be about my last choice, maybe just ahead of balsa, due to how many nasty splinters I've gotten from it.

John

LOL, 'cause the Maple is just good look'n !

Steve Mackay

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

ThomD


>We have a big lumberyard here in Toronto that has tons of D-fir, with imaculate grain, suitable for instruments virtually, and it probably cost less than 2x stock which on a b-ft basis particularly after you have cut around the pith is not always a great deal. This place supplies wood for uses such as flooring cabinets, and boats etc... Not an HD for construction, though I wouldn't rule that out. For benches I would look for free wood, if you have the capacity to reduce it to dimensions, which is often a problem prior to getting a bench, unless you own machines. Find out where the woodturners are buying beautiful stock for 1-2 dollars a b-foot. Or go direct to a mill.

In some areas construction grade is good and in other areas it comes only from relatively poor stock. Since 2x frames are way overbuilt anyway, either source is fine for walls. You may find some better grade boards for trusses or for the decks of scaffolding.

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Dick Schafer


>You're looking at construction grade lumber, that's pretty much what you'll get.

Ask for CVG Fir, it'll cost you more, but will be quite stable and knot free(CVG Clear Vertical Grain). But, you'll be getting into hardwood pricing for it.

borg wood is pricey. Tips to find cheap hardwood

Dave Thompson


>Around here the borgs sell their premium construction grade lumber (still loaded with knots) for $2 per 2x4. That comes out to $1.75/bf. I use to be able to get better quality "premium" douglas fir for $3 2x4x8' It's still green, so you have to take that into consideration during implementation. I built a shaker style bench bottom out of construction grade green material, and was able to exploit mortises in green 4x4s to clamp on dry tenons as the mortises dried.

I know recently maple has been going up in price, though I can still find it cheaper than 2x4's. There's a guy in Southern Illinois that sells green maple for $.87/bf. When I built my main work bench (all maple), I paid $1/bf from a small dealer Lafayette Indiana who sold out of his garage, (knot free btw). If you look around and can store a couple hundred bf, the savings can be huge.

Some tricks to finding small local sources:

• I've bought from people who advertise on woodweb.com. I've gotten very high quality wood from contacts here, including QSWO, Jatoba, curly cherry, curly maple, curly walnut, etc. Relative to what woodworking stores charge, prices have been 30%-80% less.
  
  
• Here's a link to a lists of small independent dealers in your area (great resource).
  
  
• On e-bay, you can go to something like crafts->woodworking->woodworking Lumber, and then sort by Distance Nearest. This will put the local dealers at the top. They may not be selling on e-bay what you are looking for, but you can send them an e-mail and ask what else they have.
  
  
• Haven't tried it yet, but woodcentral has the woodfinder page.
  
  
• You can look in the yellow pages, and call up your nearest tree arborist. He may not have a woodmiser, but it's highly likely he knows who to hand off the next walnut tree to, that he chops down.
  
  

enjoy,

Dave

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Adam Cherubini


>I think you should use maple (just kidding)

My advice is to sort through the racks and get the best pieces, then go to the other place across the street and get their best. When you rip it, put the clear side on the top. If the bottom has knots, so what?

Secondly, the Bob Key bench is okay, but why not just build a Nicholson bench? That way, you can get out of all that laminating. Its designed for constrcution lumber. I think its a shame to put all that effort (not to mention glue) into doug fir when you could put the same effort into.........ah never mind! :)

Adam

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Pete Ducklow


>I just finished my bench and it does have knots. I made sure that the best side of the 2X4 was on the top. I figured that it's a workbench, not a dining room table.

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Dave Thompson


>Nice looking top. Personally, I like knots and the character they can bring into certain pieces. I just don't like to plane knots. Looks like you managed just fine. Congrats...

Dave

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Stephen in Ottawa


>I built the Bob Key beginners bench about three years ago out of construction lumber which, here in Ottawa, is usually spruce. Sure it has knots, but they arn't really a problem. Pick the clearest, straightest boards you can find. Personally I had more problems getting relatively straight pieces. Don't bother with warped boards, as even if you flatten them, they will usually not stay that way. You can usually clamp out a small amount of wrap, but not too much.

The bench is great for a beginner as it is heavy and stable enough to enable you to do good hand work without investing a lot of time and money in a fancy hardwood bench.

- Stephen

Conspiracy Theory

Gerry D.


>I have run into the same difficulty in obtaining decent construction grade lumbar for a bench project, namely Chris Schwarz' Roubo bench. (Due to lack of power tools, to all be done by hand. I'll send completed pictures to your descendants.)

I had the opportunity to drool on Chris' bench at the fall MWTCA in St. Charles, Illinois. A thing of beauty, constructed of "construction grade" SYP, which glowed with an unearthly, knot-free light. Chris adamantly attests that he has no relationship, pecuniary or otherwise, with the borg that supplied the lumber. And I have no reason to doubt him.

In the current issue of WWM, Chris again sings the praises of the SYP from his local "home center." Chris again, as in the Roubo bench article, claims "The trick to using the stuff is to buy the wider stock, usually 2 x 12s. That stuff is always cleaner and has a significant amount of nice quartersawn grain at the edge of the boards."

Now I have examined the 2 x 10 and 2 x 12 stock in evey "home center" in the Chicago Metro area. To be generous, this material could be useful, if planed down to shavings, and used to line the bottom of my daughter's guinea pig cage. However, the people at the pet shop stated you should avoid pine.

I have come to the conclusion that the aforementioned "home center," hidden somewhere in Ohio, is hoarding all of the knot-free, quartersawn, straight, construction lumber in North America. Either that of Chris has located the wormhole entry to Bizarro World, where the Borg actually stocks inventory worth purchasing.

Gerry,

Wondering how OJ's search for the real killer is going....

Find out where the contractors shop

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA


>In our area, there's a lumberyard where the contractors (at least the classier ones - those who have to build cheap go to the orange borg) shop, and the quality of the wood is significantly higher, at not much higher price, than the borg wood. If you can find the local equivalent (assuming there is one), you may have the same luck.

According to Christopher Schwarz

wilbur


>I actually emailed Christopher Schwarz about this issue, after seeing the photos of his pristine, knot-free Roubo benchtop. He was nice enough to email me back and said that in his experience:

- His rejection rate of SYP for these sorts of projects is about 50% in his area

- A couple of years ago he built a workbench during a show in L.A. and went to the local Home Depot to buy Douglas fir, which was "as clear as a bell".

It looks like it may just boil down to location and a bit of luck. I guess I'll just keep looking around and scrounging where I can. Either that, or I'll have to move.

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI


>I build a very solid workbench out of construction grade treated pine 2X material. It has knots in it. If I was to take a picture and put it in a magazine, I might use my Adobe photo program to cover up the knots.

Come for a Visit!

Christopher Schwarz


>Here's the *real* conspiracy theory:

Perhaps by publishing all these workbenches made from SYP, I can create a worldwide market for the stuff and export it to exotic places. Like New Jersey. Yesssss.

Seriously, an open invitation: I will gladly take any WoodCentral person who comes to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area to a Lowe's or Home Depot with me and I guarantee we can pick out enough SYP for a workbench.

I've built five (five!) benches from the stuff. And when I taught at Marc Adams School of Woodowking in May I had to buy $700 worth of the stuff for my class (we built sawbenches). That's 70 2 x 12s. There was enough for more than three Roubo benches.

To do this I went to the Home Depot and Lowe's on the way home. Then the Home Depot by my house.

By the way, there are knots in that bench. They're just buried in the glue-ups.

Chris

Re: Find out where the contractors shop

VTAndy4


>Some of those places (where contractors shop, at least in my neck of the woods) don't let you pick through the wood before buying. A friend of mine is a builder and he said that he once had to return an entire pickup full of 2x material that was unusable. The guys at that yard acted really put out, and now he gets his wood elsewhere.

The best places to deal with that I've found are sawmills. But they don't have SYP here!!!

-Andy

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Michael Recchione


>Where in NJ are you? I'm in wood hell (in Nutley), where there are maybe 3 hardwood yards within 50 miles, one more expensive than the next - you'd think they were selling gold or something. You can find decent pieces of the wide construction stuff at the HD sometimes, but it's really wet. I don't know about gluing it. I'd avoid pressure treated, myself, because of the toxicity issues. But that's your call. One thing you might consider is using poplar instead of trying to find clear 2X construction stuff. It's not too expensive, even in my neck of the woods, and, while it's not as hard as SYP (I don't think - not sure actually), it actually makes a good benchtop. And it's much less splintery than the Douglas Fir, which might actually make it better for a benchtop.

Poplar

VTAndy4


>I've been building my bench out of poplar -- it is cheap and very easy on the tools!

-Andy

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Bill Houghton, HOT Summer in Sebastopol, CA


>My grandfather's workbench, on which he made a good deal of furniture, used 2x12 Doug fir set flat and cleated underneath, with a full supply of knots (splinters, too).

Dang good question Wilbur...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond, CA


>I've pondered on this very same question for a while. I don't know where you are but here EVERYTHING is DF or Redwood. As fear a cons't lumber goes. I see some trucks with realy nice 2x4's in the back of them around here and I wounder where they get them.

Here I can get KD DF for a price, poplar might be the way to go, got me thinking, yea I smell smoke too.

Now a question to ya'll... What's this about splinters with DF? Never had a problem with it. Redwood, now that's another story!

Scott, still waiting for one to fester up enough to dig out...

splinters...

Frank D. in Montreal


>Hi Scott,

I can attest to the splinters when working with/around DF... Last year I got a nice 6" splinter in my forarm, just sitting there under a thin layer of skin. I managed to pull out about half of it, then I had to slice through skin to get out the other half. I find that DF splinters get infected a lot quicker than splinters from other woods too. I think the fact that DF is so rigid (even though it dents easily) makes it splinter more than other softwoods. I like the smell so much, though, I choose it to work with whenever I can.

Here's a pic of my cat on some DF...

splinters

Michael Recchione


>I think that what they sell as wide construction lumber at HD around here is Douglas Fir. But I could be wrong. Whatever it is, it's very splintery - long, fat, sharp splinters break off with not much provocation. Not that I haven't used it for stuff. But I think I'd like poplar better as a bench top.

Whatever they sell as KD 4x4s is pretty good - you can pick through it and find lots of pieces good enough for the base of a workbench - I've used it for 2 of them. Also really splintery, though. But I don't care so much if it's the base.

You made my skin crwal Frank...

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond, CA


>Nasty, As you know redwood is right up there on the softwood splinter factor. A 6" one...YOW!

Nice Cat! Looks like a talker to me do you keep it (she/he) pluged in all the time? ;^)

Oh yea, nice looking board too...

Interesting, drifting somewhat...naaa way O.T.

Scott Burr in Ben Lomond, CA


>Sounds wild to me. I'm courious if we're talking about the same wood...