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+1 on thanks, Bob.
To thicken the plot, I went to my local Home Depot in Maryland several weeks ago, expecting to start a long process of looking through the #2 & BTR DF 4x4s for the one or two per load that had an acceptably low density of acceptably small knots. But ... somehow, all of the 4x4s this time were #1! Avoiding those with heartwood, I bought 8 on the spot for about $11.50 each.
My take is that if you live right for long enough, the good wood will appear.
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I think that the issue is not whether the piece of wood you are using for your bench was sourced from a 4x4 or a 4x6, but the quality of that piece of wood. If you are patient (and lucky), you can assemble a supply of 4x4's more than suitable for a workbench. I did that for mine. Of course you shouldn't use wood that contains the pith, but that is true regardless of the dimensions of the board you're starting with. Here, the kiln dried Douglas fir 4x4's are dried to much less than 19%, and I had no problems with warping as the 4x4s acclimated to my shop. And the bench wound up being pretty nice.Originally Posted by Bob Smalser
Raney Nelson had exactly the same experience with a load of kiln dried Douglas fir 4x4's that showed up at his local borg. He called me to see if I liked my Douglas fir bench, then he bought a load, and made a workbench that is fantastic. Sometimes you get really lucky at the borg.+1 on thanks, Bob.
To thicken the plot, I went to my local Home Depot in Maryland several weeks ago, expecting to start a long process of looking through the #2 & BTR DF 4x4s for the one or two per load that had an acceptably low density of acceptably small knots. But ... somehow, all of the 4x4s this time were #1! Avoiding those with heartwood, I bought 8 on the spot for about $11.50 each.
My take is that if you live right for long enough, the good wood will appear
Member
ey Aaron. Just out of curiosity what magical HD in MD had these for you? I am in College Park and most 4x4's in our local HD look like bananas.
Contributor
It was the one in Bowie, 3 or 4 weeks ago. Now I'm wishing I'd posted about it!
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Luck isn't a management tool. Observe in the USDA graphics below how even a FOHC 4X4 will move seasonally, and what off-center and spiral piths portend.
Put the same investment into understanding your materials you put into understanding your tools. Study Bruce Hoadley, the USDA Wood Handbook, and invest in a decent moisture meter.
Last edited by Bob Smalser; 08-24-2011 at 12:30 PM.
““Perhaps then, you will say, ‘But where can one have a boat like that built today?’ And I will tell you that there are still some honest men who can sharpen a saw, plane, or adze...men (who) live and work in out of the way places, but that is lucky, for they can acquire materials for one third of city prices. Best, some of these gentlemen’s boatshops are in places where nothing but the occasional honk of a wild goose will distract them from their work.” -- L Francis Herreshoff
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I'm sure I'm missing something here. By being picky about the 4x4's I used for my workbench top, and paying attention to grain orientation when I glued the thing up, I essentially have a large quartersawn lamination for my bench top. None of the 4x4s that I used contain the pith. Is that a problem?
A moisture meter told me that the 4x4s I picked up were about 12-13% at the time that I bought them.
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I think that's terrific. But can the dozens to hundreds of others who took the advice to use 4X4's say the same?
Last edited by Bob Smalser; 08-24-2011 at 1:53 PM.
““Perhaps then, you will say, ‘But where can one have a boat like that built today?’ And I will tell you that there are still some honest men who can sharpen a saw, plane, or adze...men (who) live and work in out of the way places, but that is lucky, for they can acquire materials for one third of city prices. Best, some of these gentlemen’s boatshops are in places where nothing but the occasional honk of a wild goose will distract them from their work.” -- L Francis Herreshoff
Contributor
Lots of folks (like me) will be preparing all the stock for their benches by hand planing, possibly without a bench to do it on. Under those circumstances, 4x4s are attractive because they halve the total glue joint area, and they are thick enough to deflect negligibly when just using sawhorses to support them while planing up those glue joints.
The question is whether these benefits outweigh the drawbacks that Bob's mentioned, particularly if one selects 4x4s very carefully. (Factors of two count in life expectancy, income ... and planing effort!) Other options that are often mentioned are:
1) Finding a small lumberyard that can sell pieces even wider than 4x4, already kiln dried. (As I recall that's what Bob Rozaieski did for his top.)
Or,
2) Face laminating two 1.75" thick countertops together using screws as substitutes for ultra-deep-throated clamps.
Looking nervously at the ones I selected, I see that all are FOHC (i.e. no pith), all have ring lines that are fairly straight, and most are approximately quartersawn. On the other hand, the thickness of the rings varies in some (reaction wood or growth spurt?) and the color in others.
To show what I'm talking about, here are three 4x4x6' sections that I've clamped together to use as a temporary bench top while I have the other pieces separated to dry. Just this temporary, non-flat, benchtop has revolutionized my capabilities compared to where I was before.
Last edited by Aaron Rappaport; 08-24-2011 at 2:05 PM.
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To be fair, the advice was not "Grab any 4x4 that you can find."
At the beginning of this thread, Peter referenced my workbench build thread and said, "My Borg's have 4x4's they list as Douglas Fir, but are such low quality and I am too impatient to collect one or two good boards at a time over the coming months."
At the beginning of my workbench thread, I said this about collecting wood for my workbench, which I'm fairly sure prompted Peter's comment about being impatient:
"I've been collecting kiln dried Douglas fir 4x4s from the borg for this project. I'd go there every few weeks from work, pick through their pile and leave with three that were clear, and knot free. I picked the best looking ones for the top. When I'm done gluing this up, I expect to have a benchtop that's essentially clear quartersawn Douglas fir with pretty tight grain (21-38 rings per inch, if I counted correctly)."
So the advice about using 4x4s includes basic things like paying attention to grain direction and the quality of the wood. To be sure, any old 4x4 will not be ideal for a workbench top. But that's not the same as dismissing all 4x4 material out of hand.
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Good to know. I play golf in Crofton all of the time so I am near the Bowie store. I will check it out since the local HD in College Park is just horrible. It is very rare that I can get any worthwhile help and the lumber is way worse than the sometimes bad stuff other home centers offer. Several times I have gotten very good help and advice from one gentleman in the tool section though. The poor guy must go nuts working there. I did let the manager know of his help but he didn't seem to care
Member
There is only one cut of 4X4 sufficiently stable for use as a workbench top, and that's pure qsawn like shown in the upper center of the graphic below.
As in a typical lumberyard stack of 4X4's those are the rare exception and not the rule, dismissing 4X stock out of hand in favor of 1X and 2X stock makes sense to me.
““Perhaps then, you will say, ‘But where can one have a boat like that built today?’ And I will tell you that there are still some honest men who can sharpen a saw, plane, or adze...men (who) live and work in out of the way places, but that is lucky, for they can acquire materials for one third of city prices. Best, some of these gentlemen’s boatshops are in places where nothing but the occasional honk of a wild goose will distract them from their work.” -- L Francis Herreshoff
Contributor
Bob, what about the cut shown just to the right of the pure quartersawn one?
Wilbur, are you sure about your 21-38 rings per inch number? I counted on your picture and got more like 10 rings per inch. 21-38 seems almost too good to be true. Maybe with old growth (fortunately not cutting too much of that anymore, at least in the U.S.) . Otherwise - drought-year wood? shade grown DF??? Droughts that last over 10 years are rare and DF is usually grown commercially in non-shady conditions (clearcuts).
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And as I said above, sometimes you get lucky. There's no harm in looking. There are also other sources for workbench wood.
The cut to the right is a rift sawn piece. I had some of those, and used them for stretchers. I'd pass on them for the top. As far as the ring density goes, I did come up with 21-38 when I originally counted them, and I arranged the boards so that they were in order of ring density, with the most dense at the front, and least dense from the back. That shot is from the back part of the bench.
I could be off. I'll count them again when I get home tonight. I do remember counting the rings looking at the end grain. In any case, I really like my bench.
Member
The riftsawn post shrinks and swells from a square into a rhombus, inducing stress into the top that makes it more likely to twist against its mountings. So will a riftsawn 1X or 2X board, but with a whole lot less force than the 4X. In edgejoining or laminating, you even out those stresses by "flipping the cups" (below), and the thinner the stock, the more likely you will cancel them out entirely. In turn, the thicker the stock...the less likely.
““Perhaps then, you will say, ‘But where can one have a boat like that built today?’ And I will tell you that there are still some honest men who can sharpen a saw, plane, or adze...men (who) live and work in out of the way places, but that is lucky, for they can acquire materials for one third of city prices. Best, some of these gentlemen’s boatshops are in places where nothing but the occasional honk of a wild goose will distract them from their work.” -- L Francis Herreshoff
Contributor
Thanks Wilbur. I wasn't intending to criticize your counting. My concern is that 21-38 rings per inch may set the bar unreachably high for those of us trying to source "big wood" from a Borg. I would love to know that it's unnecessarily high too.
I see the problem with rift-sawn now that I think about it. The cross-section of these timbers is going to become a parallelogram as the wood moves with the seasons. Hmm, I wonder if a viable work-around is to place the rift-sawn pieces all together with their ring orientation parallel, so that they all become a parallelogram that's tilted in the same direction? The other uses would be stand-alone, as in the strethers that you mentioned. They won't work for Roubo-sized legs because those are bigger than 4x4. I other than a workbench I don't have much need for such large pieces of wood, so might end up discarding them (they're already rough cut to length, so can't be returned.)
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