Question re: C. Schwartz' Roubo Bench

Re: Question re: C. Schwartz' Roubo Bench

Paul in NJ

>Hi Patrick,

I would be concerned about the high moisture content. I know Houston is very humid but with that moisture content, you have the potential for considerable shrinkage. The shrinkage may cause some checking and twisting. Still, your idea has merit especially since you can pick your piece. I would look for a straight-grained timber with few and small knots. Avoid pieces that have the pith (center core), they will always check. Try to find a piece where the end grain is perpendicular to the edge. When it is re-sawn, have it cut perpendicular to the edge grain so that you wind up with two quarter sawn planks.

Another option for instant bench tops are gluelam beams. Theses are structural beams made from 2x stock glued together. They come in thicknesses and widths suitable for bench tops. They are made in long lengths (50� ?) and sometimes left over pieces are available at bargain prices.

Paul Dzioba

Laminated Beams LVL *LINK*

Christopher Schwarz

>I've actually been trying to talk Senior Editor Bob Lang into building his bench with those beams. No luck.

If anyone has experience with these, I'd really like to hear about it. My concern is that flattening the benchtop would be hard on the tooling with all that glue between the lams.

But construction could be simplified with these beams. And I could finally have the 50' bench of my dreams....

Chris


http://www.lpcorp.com/lvl/lvl.aspx

Re: Question re: C. Schwarz's Roubo Bench

Christopher Schwarz

>As noted by others, moisture is a big deal. I'll bring SYP into the shop at 22 percent MC, but I really want it to reach equilibrium before I do dimension-critical work on it. (Here, that's about 13 percent).

It dries rapidly. And once it's reach equilibrium, it's quite stable.

Please let us know what you do!

Chris

Re: Laminated Beams LVL *LINK*

Paul in NJ

>Chris,

These are the type of beams I meant, almost like a top you would glue up yourself. I agree the LVLs have a lot of glue, I wouldn't want to plane them.

Paul


GLULAM

Re: Laminated Beams LVL

Wiley Horne

>For those interested.....be sure to get the _uncambered_ glulams.

Wiley....who agrees with Paul

I would but

Bob Lang

>I've been reading this new book that has me convinced that to make the bench really useful I need to have holes and cutouts in the top for various and sundry devices. Easy to do while gluing up, but not much fun to cut out of LVL. In theory though, I do think it would make a good bench top, especially if you could happen upon some leftovers from a job site.

Bob Lang

Re: Laminated Beams LVL

Christopher Schwarz

>Ah, I've never seen those. Those look somewhat promising if the price is right and you dry them.

Thanks for the link!

Chris

A Real Roubo Bench

Warren in Lancaster, Pa

>In the Eighteenth Century no one would have wanted a laminated bench because the hide glue they used becomes brittle as it ages. This afternoon I was talking to a sawyer and I asked what he would charge for a piece of beech that was 4" X 20" X 96". He said about 19 dollars (35 cents a board foot). Of coarse the top would need to be trued several times in the first years, but the trade off is that there is none of the work of gluing all those pieces together. I think more workers ought to consider this option, which was the way to go in the Eighteenth Century.

Re: A Real Roubo Bench

Dean J in MN

>I take one. :-)

-Dean

Re: A Real Roubo Bench

Christopher Schwarz

>Warren,

I think you are a lucky man. I have talked to three or four sawyers about a job such as that, and they have no interest in the job. None. I had one (finally) agree to it, but now he won't return my calls.

Don't know why. I'm fairly agreeable and my money is good.

Chris

Re: A Real Roubo Bench

Patrick Gibbons, Houston, TX

>I could get the SYP in a 6"x24"x8' to 10'(or 12' on up for that matter) size but the price jumps up exponentially. I can also get white oak but in a lower grade. But that price on the beech is unbeatable.

Re: A Real Roubo Bench

VTAndy4

>That is a pretty amazing price on beech. I guess it hasn't been dried, but even then it is an amazing price. I'd take one but I don't think that my parents can fit it in their car to drive it up north!

-Andy

Re: Laminated Beams LVL

ThomD

>I'm sure if you find the right GLulam as in Paul's photo you are fine. However, one thing to be aware of is those things are designed for use in a situation where the wide side is radial to the earth. The ones I have seen often have nice pieces on the outside, and a bunch of junk in the middle. It's like an I-Beam, where you need a substatian flange, but the web can be a lot less impressive. If you roll it 90 degrees your top could be mostly rathe nasty.

I like the micro laminated stuff that is like plywwod but all the layers run the same direction. Also, for practicality, torsion boxes of ply make great tops.

As far as tooling is concerned, If you use hand tools you can sharpen easily. I keep glues away from my stationary tools. I once used a Japanese plane to build a whole trimaran, and never resharpened. Eventually it was incredibly dull and the balde hung out a long way, but it would still take a cut. I trimed a lot of fiberglass, ply and epoxy resin before returning to the shop for a re-build.

Re: A Real Roubo Bench

Stephen

>Warren where can I find this sawmill?

Stephen from Hershey

Re: A Real Roubo Bench

Warren in Lancaster, Pa

>Stephen, I also had a reader contact me privately with the same question. This fellow is a personal friend and neighbor with a wholesale business. I'm not sure if this is something he would do just for me or something he would do for anybody. The fact that he occaionally saws up an appropriate log does not mean he wants to go to the trouble of keeping track of a small time customer, calling him up, and hoping he comes and the timber is nice enough for him. He recently abandoned selling slabwood for firewood because it was too much trouble.

I sharpen kitchen knives for half a dozen neighbor ladies for $1 apiece. I am not interested in dealing with the public in this way.

My point was that I didn't think people were even considering this option, which should yield a nice bench top at a reasonable cost, albeit with some legwork. Last month I talked to a carpenter from New Hampshire who said that no one was interested in logging his property because it was mostly beech. It surprised him to learn that beech had any uses besides pallet wood. American beech is one of the most widely distributed species in North America. The range is from Maine to Wisconsin and Georgia to Arkansas. Probably the majority of people in US and Canada live within the range. The largest trees are found in the Ohio River vally, Chris's backyard.

You were right...

VTAndy4

>... that many were not considering the option, and in my case it was because I believed that it would be prohibitively expensive. Now I know to ask around some more. For someone using handtools only, preparing 15 or so 96 inch boards to laminate a benchtop is a daunting prospect.

Places to Look. Things to Consider

Christopher Schwarz

>If you are looking for a custom sawyer, try calling Woodmizer, which keeps a database of custom sawyers. They have been able to hook us up with custom cutters in the past. Now whether they will do the job is another question entirely.

And as someone who has been involved in custom cutting projects, be sure to consider transportation of the bole and the finished slab. Those were the parts that we never gave enough thought to.

Third, you will have to wait for this massive slab to dry if you cannot get a kiln to do it for you. Air drying a slab like this will take a minimum of six months (for an good overview, try "Harvesting Urban Timber" by Sam Sherrill).

Chris

Re: Places to Look. Things to Consider

Bob Lang

>This raises an interesting (at least to me) historical and economic question. I think about this nearly every time I'm out in the woods. For some reason, Beech has been out of fashion as a commercial wood, but in the wild there are some enormous old Beech trees while all the other species are scrawny kids. In southeastern Ohio especially I've seen a lot of this. I suspect this is true throughout the Ohio valley, but I haven't had much time for hiking since moving to Cincinnati.

The reason Beech was used in the old days is that it was plentiful and cheap while meeting the other basic bench stuff criteria. Nowadays it seems hard to find and kind of pricey, at least at the lumberyard. Maybe generating more demand might have an impact on the supply.

Bob Lang

Re: Perfect Plank?

Robin Corell in Atascadero Ca

>Why not use Perfect Plank? I have used a 2" or 3" slab tossed on a pair of saw horses as a makeshift bench more times than I can count when working on big patterns away from my bench. I have only worked with sugar pine Perfect Plank but I know it is made in a maple, mahogany, and alder. My local supplier only carries sugar pine in 2",3",4",6" thickness in 72"x17"slabs, but i'm pretty sure it comes in much bigger sizes.

The only down side to Perfect Plank is that all the individual pieces are not matched for grain direction so hand planing is only possible cross grain. Lacking any personal experiance with gluelam's I would venture a guess that they too are not arranged for consistant grain direction and would also have this same short comming.

Robin

Re: Places to Look. Things to Consider

mike hamilton

>Isn't beech the terminal phase of oak/hickory/maple forests? If so, we'd be doing ourselves a favor by opening up the canopy to more oaks, maples and hickories. I'd best be doing my civic duty and looking for beech sawyers for my next bench. On the other hand, don't large beeches have a tendency to be hollow?

Regards,

Mike Hamilton

Plainfield, IN

Re: Places to Look. Things to Consider

VTAndy4

>Thanks for the tips. I would have thought that it would have to dry for much longer than 6 months, though!

Re: Places to Look. Things to Consider

VTAndy4

>Thanks for the tips. I would have thought that it would have to dry for much longer than 6 months, though!

Re: Places to Look. Things to Consider

Christopher Schwarz

>Well that's the minimum according to Sam Sherrill, who has air-dried tens of thousands of board feet of urban timber.

My guess is longer as well.

Chris

Green Beech

Warren in Lancaster, Pa

>You could work it the day it is cut, like we do for timber framing. If you had a big plank and some 4X4 timbers you could start right away making mortises and tenons. It is nice if you have a slick which works very easily in green wood to pare tenons. Also it is a lot easier to bore large holes and chisel for the mortices in green wood. You would have to true the top several times as it dries.

When I demonstrate the polelathe, I like to use dry wood so I can show off the fine surfaces. However I often get asked about turning green wood, so three years ago, to show people, I turned some 2X16 cylinders out of beech the day after I saw the tree cut down. There is some distortion in the cylinders, more noticable by feel than by eye, but when I looked at them just now there are almost no checks. Of the three pieces, one has two small endchecks, visible with a hand lens.