Old Growth Doug Fir is hard stuff

[Tony Shea]

I am currently just building a little chisel rack to keep on my bench for the chisels I use during a project. Got the idea actually from a picture of on Blue Spruce Toolworks with their butt chisels sitting in a small rack. Thought it would be very handy as some of my chisels have nothing to stop them from rolling around, small japanese chisels.

Anyways, my point of the post is just to point out how dense some of this doug fir I have is. It is left over from a job I was on last year, toungue and groove interior siding. I grabbed as may left over tight grained peices as I could. Im an electrician therefore didn't actually work with the material. I had no idea how dense the latewood grain in the stuff is. Which in the peices I grabbed have more latewood than early, super tight grained old growth looking stuff. It is doing a number on my backsaws trying to crosscut it. I will post a pic when I get my camera. Kind of a pointless thread but just thought I'd share my experience with an often over looked beautiful wood.

[Russell Sansom]

You are correct, Sir!
I've been restoring Victorian buildings in San Francisco which are built of Douglas Fir and Redwood. Sometimes it's very difficult even to drive a nail into an old-growth DF stud. As it has aged, it has become a bit brittle in places. The hard grain delaminates from the softer grain. But it isn't a huge problem, just that you have to be careful. Cross-cutting a board will blow out the back side pretty badly...to the degree that I take a prophylactic saw cut down the back side before proceeding.
Having said that, I use a good deal of DF in my work. It's the least expensive "good" softwood still around. It can still be found in large dimensions. Once you compensate for its "unique properties" it's ok to work. It's one of the woods I prefer to cross cut with a table saw because it can be a pita to shoot or block-plane the end grain. That bone-hard "latewood" is really hard on chisels when mortising, so a thoughtful touch is required while pounding in order to avoid serious chisel chipping. I also find it a little fussy about gluing up. And in my experience, sanding is usually a disaster since the soft grain abrades away long before the hard grain, leaving a dished-out, amateurish looking surface.
On the other hand, it ages into a beautiful baked-peanut color. I'm almost always happy with a clear shellac finish.

[Tom Vanzant]

Twenty-odd years ago I acquired about 100 linear feet of quarter-sawn DF 1 x 12s from my FIL. It had served as loose shelving in his distributorship for over 40 years, with just a shellac finish. I used it to make four shelf units for my shop and added pine and MDF stick and panel doors. The problem is that the DF is not visible... a waste of that beautiful wood! I'm planning a total re-build of the shelf/cabinet units using a lesser wood and re-purposing the DF for more visible projects. I'll just have to work around the rows of shelf-pin holes.
This wood is very hard & very brittle. All screw and nail holes must be pre-drilled to prevent splitting. I agree that sanding old DF can be a challenge. I plane instead, including triple-chamfers on the edges instead of a radius.
I think a chisel rack would be a fitting project for re-use of this DF, and it will be portable enough to take to my FIL and show him. He was a hobbyist woodworker until just a few years ago, but he's almost 88 and not too mobile anymore.

[Andrae Covington]

My workbench is old-growth rift- and quartersawn douglas-fir. Drilling / chopping the mortises was a real bear at times, and it sure likes to splinter along the edges. It's rock solid though.

198740

[Leigh Betsch]

I picked up a bunch of old DF barn beams, plan to use them to build a bench one of these days. Even the splinters has splinters!

[Chris Mahmood]

Anyways, my point of the post is just to point out how dense some of this doug fir I have is. It is left over from a job I was on last year, toungue and groove interior siding. I grabbed as may left over tight grained peices as I could. Im an electrician therefore didn't actually work with the material. I had no idea how dense the latewood grain in the stuff is.

Just imagine trying to drive MC staples into it in a 120F attic...

[Tony Shea]

Just imagine trying to drive MC staples into it in a 120F attic.


Been there and done that. At the same jobsite there were many old large houses right on the ocean in Somesville (next to Bar Harbor). It was basically a little community owned by a very wealthy man. We were remodeling a kitchen of one of the main houses and basically had it gutted. Turns out this entire house, which was massive, had been framed up with doug fir. Old growth stuff that had been there for decades with unisulated walls and attic. I had to replace and rewire all the lights throughout the house and re-wired the kitchen completely. The doug fir had been baked by the heat in the summer and was some of the hardest stuff I've ever had to drill and staple to. I do not miss crawling around in the attic in the middle of summer at all. Although I did find some neat things up there from years back. Whoever owned it before was a painter and found lots of paintings and painter supplies up there. All in all was a very nice job to be part of.