Live Oak for a workbench?

[John Doward]

I'm a hobbyist, but it's time for me to finally build an actual workbench. I was wanting to build one out of white oak, as that's what my research led me to, but I've had the hardest time finding hardwood without an exorbitant price down here in Central Florida.

So my next plan was to build it from Southern Yellow Pine.

Well, I stumbled upon a sawmill relatively local to me, and the gentleman has some felled Live Oaks that I can get for just a couple bucks per board foot, rough cut.

So I'm wondering what you guys think of Live Oak for a workbench? It'd be a 8' long, 27" wide, 2" thick top made from 3 pieces of 9/4 thick Live Oak, with a modified H-frame bottom that I'm going to add shelving on one side, and drawers on the other.

I should mention this won't be a wood-working specific bench, more of a 'my first workbench' for general duty.

He's also got a ton of Cherry for $3/board foot that I'm thinking of getting to build the wife some nice bookshelves. She's got over 2000 books at last count, LOL!

What do you guys think? He had a 6x6 cut from another Live Oak tree that he had me take a hammer to, and I can say it's hard stuff - I could barely leave marks in it!

[Derrell W Sloan]

I have heard, but don't for a fact, that live oak usually has a lot of internal stress which makes it hard to work with. Since there is a ton of live oak in my neck of the woods I'm interested to hear what others say about this. I will say that the local sawmills in this area and the hardwood dealers usually have red oak and white oak but I have never seen live oak offered and I always wondered why.

[Jim Andrew]

I'd go thicker than 2" for the top. Made mine 3", as that's all the material I had, but would have preferred a thicker top. Downside is that oak is heavy!