Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

wilbur


>Hi Michael,

I'm in East Brunswick. Monteath Lumber is close to me for hardwoods, but they don't really carry any softwoods. I had thought about poplar, but I have not seen anyone use it (or even consider it) so far. Maybe I'll take another look.

Hemlock

Frank D. in Montreal


>Yup she's a talker alright, but when she wakes us up a 4 or 5 in the morning to tell us that she's bored I unplug her pretty fast.

I get my doug fir from a guy who recycles wood. It's very cheap that way, and the wood is almost always old growth and stable. I can get pretty big boards (up to 18" wide, 20' long if I want) from old beams.

I'd never use doug fir for a bench though; as mentioned it splinters too easily and it's very easy to dent. I'd use hemlock, at least up here hemlock is quite common for joist material, it's heavy, hard, and relatively stable.

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Rob Millard


>Since you can't find it locally, try buying yellow pine lumber from Steve Wall Lumber (walllumber.com). They have UPS packs for a fair price. Just read the fine print to see how you can get the 6� lengths you need. The yellow pine will be clear and dried like furniture grade lumber as opposed to construction lumber which is quite �wet�. I made my bench top 9 years ago, from No.1 yellow pine 2x12�s, and it has held up to daily use.

Rob Millard

Check the grade stamp...

John in New Mexico


>Species will be on the grade stamp as rated spans vary for different species. You may be getting white fir, which is much less splintery than douglas fir, and white rather than pinkish. You must be getting better redwood than I ever have, stuff that I worked with was so soft it'd hardly splinter at all! New and rapid growth I guess.

John

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Dan Donaldson


>My bench is made of poplar. Works fine for me.

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Edward in Vancouver


>I tend to get "creative" with my wood supplies. I'm a Chef by trade and I've had ample opportunity to pick up old baker's maple top dough tables. My work bench is made out of two such table tops that I picked up for around $30.00 each. Granted, the tops were a mess, but they were originally 21/2" thick. I sliced both of them length wise, as the the front middle is usually worn out and no more than 1" thick, thicknessed each resulting 12" slab down to 1 7/8" and joined them together. Try your luck at restauarnt supply houses, the kind that deal with 2nd hand stuff as well as restaurant auctions.

Oh the legs, or the "undercariage" as I call it, is made from 2x4 red oak that I salvaged from palletes. Looks good. Covered up the nail holes with iron on red oak veneer tape....

Re: Workbench from 2x material - wood quality?

Michael Recchione


>I got the top for the first bench I built secondhand from a restaurant supply store. It smelled like pizza for quite a while :-). I flipped it over and used what had been the bottom as the top. Also thicknessed it down from about 1 3/4" to 1 1/2" to flatten it. Sad to say, it's now delaminating (pilot error - I didn't know about wood movement when I built that bench, and fastened it at 4 points. Poor thing didn't have a chance.

2x wood quality depends on location, and luck

wilbur


>I've been checking out more home centers in my area over this weekend. It does look like location and luck have a bit to do with what you'll find.

Again, I'm in central NJ, and all of the 2x material seems to be Douglas fir or kiln-dried SPF 2x4's. I haven't found KD-SPF in any other sizes.

I found that one of the local Home Depots carries untreated 4x4x8 Douglas fir beams that can yield good results -- I found two beams with at least a 6' span of knot free wood, which I grabbed. But most of the Home Depots around here don't carry this stuff.

I stopped into the Lowes in my town as well, and found that they must have gotten a delivery of 2x10 and 2x12 Douglas fir that was of much higher quality than I had seen before. Up to now, I had planned on taking wider boards and ripping out 4" wide boards to laminate into my workbench top, but the knot patterns I had been seeing made this pretty much impossible for the vast majority of the boards I found. The 2x material here was much better quality than what I saw a couple of weeks ago in the same store.

I also went to Delaware this weekend to pick up a combination jointer-planer from Woodcraft (but that's another story). I stopped into a Home Depot and found that the type of 2x wood they carried was much different. They only had kiln-dried hem-fir 2x material. No Douglas fir at all. This stuff had slightly more knots, but the knots themselves were smaller.

So it looks like that there definitely is regional variation in what is available for 2x material. Also, there is an element of luck as to what the big box retailers have at any one time.