Workbench Wood
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3 September 2014 at 1:13 am #63225
What do you suggest for workbench wood, considering my detached garage is poorly sealed and an insect and spider heaven? Should I look to more hard woods than the pine / spruce / fir? I don’t have a lot of moisture problems, just bugs. If pine species are ok, is construction grade good enough or should I go for the other stuff?
3 September 2014 at 10:49 am #63251Hi Ben,
As long as the bugs in your garage aren’t the wood boring kind, you’ll be ok with most woods. Wood boring bugs will still eat hardwoods, but will stop when they reach the heartwood.
Construction grade timber *can* be good enough. The key is to look at the growth rings on the endgrain. You want many rings, as tightly packed as possible. I picked some crappy stuff when I made my bench because I didn’t know any better and it’s much lighter than I’d like.
An idea worth entertaining if you can mill the components from larger pieces is to look on eBay for pine joists. They’re normally around 9×3″ and very tough, in lengths of around 14ft or more. There will be dead knots but that’s not a problem for a workbench – just pick the clearest parts for the top. You’ll need a band saw, table saw, or a very sharp rip saw and a strong sawing arm to rip them down to width.
Whatever wood you do get, let it settle in your garage for a while before milling it to component sizes – it will likely move a fair bit but you can plane it out before you start the joinery.
Hope this helps.
George.
3 September 2014 at 3:53 pm #63272Thanks! Very helpful.
I am just starting out. I don’t have much in the way of power tools or hand tools yet. I still have to find a #4 bench/smoothing plane to buy. Hopefully my cheapy Stanley chisels will work for now. So ya there will be no full length ripping myself at this point.
22 September 2014 at 3:46 am #99520Any issues with getting a 2x12x8 (or 2x12x16 cut in half) for benchtop and wellboard instead of getting a bunch of 2×4 ripped to 3″ and glueing them together?
Hi Ben
That may seem an easy option and many benches have been made that way but the lamination has some great advantages over a solid slab. One is strength as a laminated top is likely to be stronger. Check out the wooden joists in some sports facilities or even swimming pools. They can span a large distance relatively lightly.
The second one is wood movement where a laminated section is likely to be more stable wrt. to seasonal humidity changes.
Third one is weight as you’ll want a heavy bench to plane on.
Check out Paul’s blog on the workbench build.Good luck
Diego22 September 2014 at 5:42 pm #103519I’m on board; just trying to understand.
I get the movement aspect with regards to moisture content.
Unless the stability comment only directly relates to movement due to moisture, I don’t get how you get more stability. Maybe because individual pieces have less overall thickness and less likely to belly over time due to gravity?
The weight factor I really don’t get; if you have 8 1.5″x3″x 8′ sections vs 1 12″x3″x8′, they are the same dimensions. The weight would seem to be the same to me.
Thanks for the answers. This is interesting.
22 September 2014 at 6:30 pm #103974Ben
The first English style workbench (you can look at the bench on lumberjocks just type in Nicholson workbench)I built was built as you describe with two 2X10X12′ boards cut down to six feet the glued together to get a slab that was about 2 3/4″ thick. Have I understood you correctly on that? If I have then that method worked okay, it was simple and very fast. I was able to mark out where I wanted dogholes before I glued it together and put a drywall screw everywhere that I wanted to drill a 3/4″ doghole later that really helped with glue up. And since I drill out here the dogholes were at anyways I didn’t have any screw holes in the finished bench. However the problem I had was the aprons weren’t glued to the top slab as Paul Sellers does on his bench. Over time a small ledge formed it was very annoying. I think you would have some cross grain gluing problems since wood expands across it’s width the apron grain is oriented vertically and the double slab is oriented horizontally. But when you rip a 2×12 in three or four pieces and put it on it’s end the grain is oriented vertically just like your apron is and so doing it that way you no longer have a cross grain problem. I hope this helps you but I am not telling how to do it. One way is fast and easy doesn’t require a lot of clamps, but has the cross grain conflict. And the other way takes more time and clamps but does not have the cross grain problem. Best of luck.
Maybe because individual pieces have less overall thickness and less likely to belly over time due to gravity?
That is the main idea. Wood movement is never truly symmetrical and smaller sections will have less total movement. A thick enough slab will break a joint, screws alone will not stop it from moving.
The weight factor I really don’t get;
The glue?
Just kidding. I think it’s more a strength to weight ratio thing. A wider slab is also less likely to be quarter sawn and so may contain less dense growth rings. With a lamination you get to choose that to work in your favor.Diego
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