My second-to-last workbench - top DF vs. poplar

[jim gossage]

I'd be fine with ash. It's about ~3.60 in my area, which is a little more than I'd like to spend on the bench this go-around
.

You can get a great deal on ash at walllumber.com, $2.60/bf for 4/4, 2.95 for 8/4 and 1.75 for 1C. They always ship excellent pieces and you can even talk to the owner Steve about what you want.

[Mark Salomon]

I made my son-in-law a similarly sized bench--poplar base with a hard maple top. I prefer the poplar top but I'm careful to only use it for woodworking(and not things like pounding on a paint can that won't open or a frozen bolt on a starter motor!). So it's held up just fine and I have no regrets. My son-in-law's bench was also made to do double duty as an outfeed table so it's on very heavy duty casters--really easy to move around but not quite as rock solid for hand planing (which he doesn't do)

[Larry Whitlow]

Thanks Larry...it's definitely a thought. Part of me still wants as much of a "real" bench as possible. I think some of that is probably a bit of the neanderthal bug taking over. Pretty soon I'll be peeling potatoes with sharpened rocks.

The main reason I wouldn't do MDF for this bench top is that it's hard to flatten if it goes out of flat. I made a tilt-top assembly table, and the top for that was double-layer MDF edged with hardwood (though it was glued). It started out dead flat and then eventually developed some out-of-flat areas (a little over 1/32" over 3 feet) that I can't do much about. One attraction of a wood top is being able to flatten it. I also like the idea of going through as much of a traditional bench build as possible so as to practice my hand tool skills with larger-scale joinery and flattening/smoothing.

But that all being said, the MDF/ply approach is worth considering.

Yep. One, if not the major, downside to using sheetgoods is you don't get the satisfaction of building the traditional benchtop. Have fun. Larry

[Lee Ludden]

When I was out in Pasadena for the Woodworking in America show last month, I took one of Chris Schwartz's classes on building a saw bench. In his casual remarks, he mentioned that he had purchased the lumber for the demonstration at a local Lowes and how lucky we west coast people were to have 4x8 DF boards available at the BORG and that three of them would be about all it took to build a pretty nice bench.

I expect if you picked up a few of those with the grain running vertical (quartersaw), and jointed them 4 square and glued them into a top, it would be just fine. You might want to cut it a bit long and put something on the end grain to help prevent checking. That is actually what I plan on doing after I finish some of my Christmas projects.