SYP Alternatives for Bench Building? [Archive] - Sawmill Creek Woodworking Community

Noah Barfield

03-11-2011, 1:13 AM

Hi all,

I'm relatively new to the world of woodworking. One of the things I've realized early on is that a bench would make this journey a whole lot easier. I've been looking at plans on line as well as those in Christopher Schwarz's book and have read that SYP is the wood of choice for bench building.

Since I live in Western Washington (near Seattle), syp is hard to come by. What would be a good locally available (Pacific Northwest) alternative?

Thanks,

Noah

Dave MacArthur

03-11-2011, 4:24 AM

Hi,
I just finished reading the Scott Landis book "The Workbench Book" for the second time. Actually, no one says SYP is the wood of choice... what I've seen is that ANY wood that meets a few requirements can be the right wood.
1. stable
2. hard
3. workable
4. cheap to get
5. available.

SYP is one that is used where it's available because it's cheap and meets the basic requirements. In Europe, Beech is what does it. If you can spring for it, maple is preferred in most places in the US for being available and cheaper than beech usually, and better than SYP.

However, I have read and seen in numerous threads here, and elsewhere, that Douglas Fir can do a good job for a bench if you buy the right planks. I would think that to be the most available and cheapest wood up where you are, and many folks have used it to fine effect.

Noah Barfield

03-11-2011, 1:11 PM

Thanks Dave!

Again I'm a true beginner here, so I was beginning to think somehow that SYP was the wood of choice. It's good to know that there are other options.

I'd love to do a bench in maple, but that's probably out of my price-range right now. I had never considered using Douglas Fir--I thought it would be too soft for a woodworking table. How does it tend to hold up?

Noah

fRED mCnEILL

03-12-2011, 12:26 AM

My bench is made of Dougas fir. It holds up very well.

When I first started out woodworking 15 or so years ago I wanted to build a picnic table. The plans (Wood mag) called for Redwood. I live in British Columbia and Redwood is very uncommon but, because I thought I had to follow the plans to the "letter" I drove to Washington State to buy the redwood. As I know now I could have just as easily used Western Red Cedar which is plentiful here. A "newbie" mistake.LOL

Stephen Cherry

03-12-2011, 12:57 AM

http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/mat/2258856933.html

Dave MacArthur

03-12-2011, 3:54 AM

Wow! Stephen Cherry, you need to start looking for maple near me in Phoenix! Or some other bench wood. Mesquite bench? Hickory? That's a great deal for that maple I'd think.

Kent A Bathurst

03-12-2011, 7:32 AM

.....I'd love to do a bench in maple, but that's probably out of my price-range right now. I had never considered using Douglas Fir--I thought it would be too soft for a woodworking table...

Dave's on target - my priorities would be 1] stable 2] available 3] cost effective. To the extent you can sort through the DF, straight grain is better - the size of those trees, you should be able to get qtrsawn fairly easy - just look at the end grain as you sort thru them.

Look at it from the opposite angle - the DF is relatively easy to work, so as a beginner that makes your first build a] easier to do, and 2] easier to correct mistakes - not that you will have any of those, of course - purely theoretical point.

My first WW project, and only bench, was made 13+ yrs ago from 150 yr old red oak framing joists - grade = bark + btr - from a neighbor's renovation. Yield was 100% [30% bench, 67% firewood, 2% nails, 1% cheap circular saw blades]. Stable as heck. Available from the next-door back yard. Free. Met my requirements, for sure.

I "work" my bench, and get all kinds of dings, gouges, etc. It's had the living hoo-haa beat out of it, but it looks like a workbench even more for all of that. Plugged some wayward drilled holes, haven't bothered with the nail + screw holes from fixture & jig attachment, where clamping wasn't possible. Swatches of various dye colors add to the "ambience".

DF will be easy to resurface with a belt sander. And - as years go by, you can always build a new replacement top to sit on the frame/base/cabinets, but my money says you won't need to or want to.

Jon Toebbe

03-12-2011, 10:09 AM

Yeah, Douglas Fir will work great for you. Pick through the piles at the BORG and find the nicest, cleanest boards you can -- just one or two is fine. Come back in a week or two and they'll likely have new pallets opened up. Rinse and repeat. You can assemble nearly 100% clear, quartersawn lumber for your bench if you're not in a big hurry. You'll have to let it dry out a bit and acclimate to your shop anyway.

dan sherman

03-12-2011, 10:43 AM

I would also add, buy the biggest boards the store has, even if you have to cut them down to get them home. The best lumber is always the biggest when it comes to construction lumber.

Dave Zellers

03-12-2011, 10:52 AM

Re doug fir, also look for boards with very tight growth rings.

Matt Winterowd

03-12-2011, 10:56 AM

If you want something harder than DF, ash is still pretty cheap, usually quite a bit cheaper than maple (until the beetles kill it all). Alder is another wood that you can find pretty inexpensively around here, although you have to look a little harder.

I would try to grab that maple in the craislist ad above if I had space to store any more wood.

Neil Brooks

03-12-2011, 2:55 PM

Love my HD-bought (the dimensional lumber) DF bench (that I built) !

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_WVVYjLCNo2w/TS8bljfLWLI/AAAAAAAABms/4jgI9zBWRd8/s512/P1050096.JPG

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_WVVYjLCNo2w/TRP69ZqK1eI/AAAAAAAABdw/TsRtiE7TASs/s512/P1050065.JPG

Steve Schoene

03-12-2011, 3:04 PM

Just to make a point about differences between southern yellow pine and douglas fir. If you frame a house with Doug. Fir, and then in a year or two want to nail firring strips to the joists to apply a ceiling under them you can do that just fine. If those joists were SYP you would likely have had to pre-drill the holes to nail into it. Nails fine (see pressure treated decks) when wet, but when it has had a chance to dry down into the single digit moisture content it can be very tough stuff. Of course doug. fir will work, but it will much more different from the ideal bench, such as beech or maple, than will the SYP.

Kent A Bathurst

03-12-2011, 4:46 PM

......SYP......Nails fine (see pressure treated decks) when wet.....

Welllll, now..... the pressure treated comparison is not actually a vaild one, methinks, seeing as how SYP [and other species used for PT] is put in a pressure cylinder and forced full of water-borne chemicals. When it comes out of the cylinder, it literally continues to drip water - for quite a while, depending on the ambient conditions, even though they pull a hard vacuum to retrieve as much of the sater + chemical as they can - and is at some huge MC% when it is delivered to the store anytime, any ambient conditions. It can stay at a high MC% for a long time in the store, if it remains inside the unit. Nothing at all the same as the KD 19% that standard framing lumber is at.

Kinda like saying pasta in the box is more brittle than cooked pasta recently out of the pot.

If you take a stick of KD19% SYP and compare it to KD19% DF or HF, it is more dense - which is one of the properties of SYP that makes it a reasonable choice for a bench top - but PT SYP is a completely different critter than KD19% SYP .

Oh - BTW, the OP would not have seen dimensional PT SYP in the PNW anyway - he'd have seen PP or HF instead.

Gary Herrmann

03-12-2011, 7:32 PM

Keep your eyes open for downed trees.

My neighbor has a standing dead maple in her yard. Once it warms up (and dries out), I'm gonna go talk to her.

At the very least, I'll stop annoying my wife when I walk around it thinking about the BF yield.

Peter Quinn

03-12-2011, 8:08 PM

My bench top is the 2" thick maple top from a salvation army tressel table my wife bought for $15. I had to re rip it to fix a few splits, but it works great, and it represents 35 BF of hard maple. Thats $.42/BF for hard maple! So maybe check the thrift stores as well. It worked for me.

On the SYP thing, I hate working with SYP, I had considered using ash or red oak, which are both cheaper and easier to come by here in New England, but I would have paid more to avoid having to clean all my tools with turpentine to get that sticky pine stink off my machines. I guess where Mr Schwartz is living SYP makes sense and everything else is far more expensive? I just haven't found this flash farm raised SYP construction lumber to be very stable even KD in clear grades for mill work. Doug Fir seems to get pretty hard as it ages, and if you have a source locally for decent material, why not? I'm not sure "very hard" is really an important requirement for a bench top. Are you planning to chop chickens on it with a cleaver, or beat the snot out of it with a ball peen hammer? If so maple or hickory are probably good choices, if not, DF will do nicely. In the book "Modern Practical Joinery" circa 1900 George Ellis suggests using "deal" for work benches, which is the British word for Doug Fir. So you would be in good company in any event.

In fact, before I would mess with all that SYP I'd be tempted to just laminate four sheets of MDF and edge band it with solid stock, Flat, hard, dings and errant drill holes can be repaired with bondo quite quickly, heavy and cheap. And you don't have to let it sit in your shop for 8 months to let it dry out! MDF won't win a prize for elegance or aesthetics, but it makes a decent work surface, though you can't hand plane it, you can hand plane ON it!

Ole Anderson

03-12-2011, 9:27 PM

Peter, is there an easy way to laminate 4 sheets of MDF without a vacuum press? How do you clamp the middle? What kind of glue? Sorry for the hijack.

Jamie Buxton

03-12-2011, 9:51 PM

Peter, is there an easy way to laminate 4 sheets of MDF without a vacuum press? How do you clamp the middle? What kind of glue? Sorry for the hijack.

Screws. Seriously, screws. Lay down what's going to be the top sheet in your table, so you're looking at what will be the bottom of that sheet. Drill a lot of clearance holes in what's going to be the next sheet. Spread glue. Put down the sheet with all the clearance holes in it. Drive screws into what will be the bottom of the top sheet. Wait for the glue to cure, then remove the screws. Repeat.

The more sheets you laminate, the stiffer the thing becomes. So you should make sure the first sheet you put down is flat. Use wedges and shims around the edges to ensure that.

Good ol' yellow glue will do just fine.

Joe Angrisani

03-13-2011, 10:21 AM

Peter, is there an easy way to laminate 4 sheets of MDF without a vacuum press? How do you clamp the middle? What kind of glue? Sorry for the hijack.

You can use cauls, Ole, whenever your clamps don't have enough reach for a project.

Though Jamie's way would work great if you have a known flat surface to do it on. I'd make the first sheet the exact finished size, then use a bearing-guided flush trim bit in my router after each lamination is dry to keep the stack properly dimensioned.

Noah Barfield

03-13-2011, 12:51 PM

Noah Barfield

03-13-2011, 1:01 PM

My bench top is the 2" thick maple top from a salvation army tressel table my wife bought for $15. I had to re rip it to fix a few splits, but it works great, and it represents 35 BF of hard maple. Thats $.42/BF for hard maple! So maybe check the thrift stores as well. It worked for me.

In fact, before I would mess with all that SYP I'd be tempted to just laminate four sheets of MDF and edge band it with solid stock, Flat, hard, dings and errant drill holes can be repaired with bondo quite quickly, heavy and cheap. And you don't have to let it sit in your shop for 8 months to let it dry out! MDF won't win a prize for elegance or aesthetics, but it makes a decent work surface, though you can't hand plane it, you can hand plane ON it!

Thanks guys! You've convinced me that DF will work just fine. I'm about 6 months to a year away from being able to convert my unfinished basement into a shop, so I've got some time to look at all the options. My neighbor and fellow woodworking buddy has an MDF / Melamine bench top that he built the way you've described above (only one 3/4 inch layer though). It's a great bench and works fine. I just find that the melamine surface is a bit slick (I have to put down a foam mat to keep a board from slipping around). Would bench dogs work on a melamine top?

The melamine top table would probably be the fastest and cheapest way to go. However, I'm really drawn to the idea of making a nice woodworking bench. Peter, I love your idea of searching through the thrift stores. We have several nice ones in our area. I'll definitely keep my eyes open for table top stock.

Neil Brooks

03-13-2011, 3:44 PM

Thanks, Noah.

You may want to know .....

a) All in ... it was just over $175;
b) Plans are found here (http://www.popularwoodworking.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10//175Workbench2.pdf).
c) More pics of mine ... if interested ... are ... here (https://picasaweb.google.com/neil0502/Workbench?feat=directlink).

After a couple months of use ... I couldn't be happier with it, and ... for the price ?

Fahgettaboutit :)

David Kumm

03-14-2011, 1:05 AM

Noah Barfield

03-14-2011, 1:39 AM

Stiffness is more important than hardness in the bench world. While both are relatively soft, there is a comfort in having the bench dent rather than the cabinet door you drop on it. Schwartz talks about regular lumber but I would haul it to a kiln. Usually for about 50cents a board foot you get stuff that won't go out of flat after you build it. Doug is slivery and it is harder to get good stuff here in WI. Have you seen the eye candy at the benchcrafted website? Dave

Dave,

Thanks for the advice about the kiln. I'll look around for one--shouldn't be too hard to find something in western WA. I just visited the benchcrafted website. Wow. I think I need to start playing the lottery again. That hardware looks magnificent.

Mike OMelia

03-14-2011, 10:20 AM

Peter, is there an easy way to laminate 4 sheets of MDF without a vacuum press? How do you clamp the middle? What kind of glue? Sorry for the hijack.

I realize the MDF approach will be controversial in that it is not inflexible. Yet 3 layers of it can be quite rigid if you do it properly. I bought a creekers poplar/mdf bench, 100" long and 27" deep. The top itself weighs about 300 pounds. And I have found it to be incredibly stable. I do plan to add a maple layer, but for now, it will more than do! Why mess with it if it meets my needs? I will point out that the builder used hefty poplar parts. It is not hard to laminated. No vacuum press needed.

Mike

Matthew Dunne

03-14-2011, 1:05 PM

Screws. Seriously, screws. Lay down what's going to be the top sheet in your table, so you're looking at what will be the bottom of that sheet. Drill a lot of clearance holes in what's going to be the next sheet. Spread glue. Put down the sheet with all the clearance holes in it. Drive screws into what will be the bottom of the top sheet. Wait for the glue to cure, then remove the screws. Repeat.

The more sheets you laminate, the stiffer the thing becomes. So you should make sure the first sheet you put down is flat. Use wedges and shims around the edges to ensure that.

Good ol' yellow glue will do just fine.

This describes exactly how I made my bench. The finewoodworking website has some videos for beginners. They outline this plan. Worked great for me, and got me started for something like $75 before a vice. (Which I didn't add for a year or so--clamps and a planing stop go a long way.)

Erik France

03-14-2011, 1:49 PM

Thanks guys! You've convinced me that DF will work just fine.I did mine out of SYP from Home Depot the summer before last. I found that the best material came from the 2x12s. I had already sorted though all of their shorter 2x10s and 2x12s. Lowes didn't carry the SYP I needed so I ended up going through the 16' long stacks at HD. I would have tried the 24' long ones, but they were way too heavy for just myself. The longer boards were generally much straighter and clearer. I had the store crosscut them in half so I could fit them in my Taurus to get 'em home.

Noah Barfield

03-14-2011, 1:59 PM

I did mine out of SYP from Home Depot the summer before last. I found that the best material came from the 2x12s. I had already sorted though all of their shorter 2x10s and 2x12s. Lowes didn't carry the SYP I needed so I ended up going through the 16' long stacks at HD. I would have tried the 24' long ones, but they were way too heavy for just myself. The longer boards were generally much straighter and clearer. I had the store crosscut them in half so I could fit them in my Taurus to get 'em home.

So did you rip the 2x12s at home? If so, what width did you make them? Were you able to get 3 2x4s from a 2x12?

Noah

Neil Brooks

03-14-2011, 2:04 PM

Noah,

You'll lose a kerf (thickness of your blade) with every cut, and/but ... remember ... "dimensional lumber" is NOT exactly the dimensions that they call it.

http://mistupid.com/homeimpr/lumber.htm

What's important is to get equal thickness pieces, out of each board.

Erik France

03-14-2011, 2:45 PM

So did you rip the 2x12s at home? If so, what width did you make them? Were you able to get 3 2x4s from a 2x12?

NoahMy top ended up being about 2 5/8" thick. If there wasn't a pith to work around I would get four 2 3/4" rips out of a 2x12 after jointing one edge. The other 1/8" was removed during thicknessing, flattening etc. Liberal use of stout cauls during the glueups helped to reduce more material removal due to misaligned pieces.

I initally designed the bench with a thicker top doing 3 rips per board, but I ended up with the 4 rips to reduce costs. The bench is plenty stout and heavy without the extra top thickness. The base had 5x5 legs on the left and 5x7 legs on the right.