Roubo from all 4/4

[brian c miller]

Thoughts on build a Roubo from all 4/4 stock (curly maple is $2 / bdft right now)

Beside a a whole lot more laminating are there any other drawbacks?

Thanks,
BCM

[Sean Kinn]

Just more glue, more jointing and planing. It'll work just fine, and may even be more stable.

[Paul Incognito]

Where are you getting curly maple for $2.00 a bf? Around here it's $6.00 plus.
Heck, even plain sawn hard maple is $4.25

[David Gendron]

What you could do instead of laminating on hedge, it would be to get as wide a boards you can get and laminat them on there faces, stagering the joints, you'll need less wood, you'll have less work to de and the curly maple will show at least! You could use dowels, biscut or splines for aligment of each layers!

[Jon Toebbe]

Where are you getting curly maple for $2.00 a bf? Around here it's $6.00 plus.
Heck, I'd leap at $6.00/bf for figured maple! Lumber ain't cheap in Colorado, that's for sure. If I were you, I'd buy up all that cheap curly maple for use on future projects you make on the bench. Make the bench out of something commonplace and inexpensive. That said, maple will work fine... just seems a waste of purty lumber. :p

[David Gendron]

Is regular maple less $$? Where are you from?

[dan sherman]

Thoughts on build a Roubo from all 4/4 stock (curly maple is $2 / bdft right now)

I will curse you if you buy curly maple for $2/bf and then hide it away inside a bench top lamination. :D:D

Stock pile the curly maple for a project that will show off the figure, any use plane hard maple for the bench top.

[Jerome Hanby]

Forgive me if this doesn't apply to a Roubo style bench. When you are laminating pieces, you can leave spaces for through mortises and use longer pieces in the middle (assuming you are gluing up at least three pieces thick)...

[Dave Anderson NH]

Brian, the only downsides I see to using curly maple in 4/4 are the extra work in laminating and the later difficulty in planing without tearout. If you edge glue all the pieces for the benchtop you will end up with a lot of endgrain every time the grain in the boards reverses to make the curls (stripes). This can be a challenge in getting a surface that is free of tearout unless you go very slow with a very light cutting depth and have an extremely sharp blade.