Pine or spruce for workbench legs?

[Chris Sonego]

Today I found a deal on some 5 x 5 rough sawn pine for possibly making legs and stretchers for my new workbench. I plan on using mortise and tenon joinery maybe even doing a draw before. Will there be any issues with using a software are you a note that?

[Andrew Seemann]

There shouldn't be, as long as it is properly dried. Only thing is if it is one of the pines or spruces that have really hard growth rings. If you are hand cutting the mortises, you just have to watch for the hard rings deflecting your chisels.

[Tom Bender]

5 x 5 legs are good, plenty of room to mortice in the aprons.

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[Rich Engelhardt]

Nothing to add - other than - I envy you using pine or spruce. The smells from your shop will be a pure pleasure.

once I get situated in my new shop - I plan to use quite a bit of pine - only for the pleasure of smelling it.

(I swear I could buy $20 worht of pine every day and just sped the day drilling holes in it with a 1 1/2" Forstner bit. :) )

[Ronald Blue]

5 x 5 legs are good, plenty of room to mortice in the aprons.

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Love that bench Tom. Did you build it?

[Justin Rapp]

My legs and stretchers are all just construction lumber, 2x6's and 4x4's. The top is hardwood. No issues at all.

[Rod Wolfy]

I got 8/4 Beech locally for $4.80 a BF for my workbench legs a couple months ago. If you can get yellow pine for cheaper, it would be worth it.

[Scott Clausen]

I used laminated Southern Yellow Pine for most of my bench with a few pieces of red oak for the short side stretchers. I love look and feel of it, easy to work too.

[Chris Sonego]

Oh boy! I just reread my original post. It seems auto correct on my phone did it’s thing.

Tom, that’s a beautiful bench!

I passed on the 5x5. It was actually too big for me to handle but was nice stuff. I ended up grabbing some 3 1/2 x 5x 8ft

The wood is a huge bargain. I left with 4 boards at $7 per board. He wanted $10 for the 5x5’s.

[Mark Gibney]

Chris is the lumber you got fully dried or is it from a construction supply place?

Also, at the bottom of any post you write you'll see an edit button that allows you to correct spellings and so on.

[Richard Coers]

It's so much easier to get strength under the bench with triangulation, not joinery and massive timber.

[Chris Sonego]

I doubt it’s fully dried. However, it was used to box massive compressors.

[Scott Winners]

3.5 x 5 actual, in softwood, would be sold at the homestore as nominal 4x6 and is what I used for the legs on my bench. Plenty of post strength to hold up your top even after cutting your mortises in them.

My only caution is the hole for the screw if you are using a leg vise. Are you using a leg vise? What diameter hole do you need to drill for the vise screw? 1.5 inches or less, relax and get building. If you need to drill a 2" hole, get the mortise for the side stretcher directly under the hole for the vise screw so you are cutting one set of vertical fibers twice, rather than one set of fibers at the stretcher mortise and a second set of vertical fibers at the hole for the vise screw.

Any mill marks on your legs? Really SPF(s) should be fine if your vise screw hole is 2 inches or less. SPF, DFir and SYP would be the rest of the top four contenders from what you describe, any will be perfectly adequate.

[Chris Sonego]

I'm going the Rob Cosman route. I'm doing 4 layers of 3/4 MDF for the top and a Sjoberg end vise. His plan calls for laminating Baltic Birch for the legs and stretchers. I was going to go that route, but can't get BB and would have had to use big box ply. Then I ran across the pine and thought this would be better. Some day I may build a hardwood top, but now, the MDF will work fine.

[Justin Rapp]

It's so much easier to get strength under the bench with triangulation, not joinery and massive timber.

Strength is one thing, weight is another.

[Tom Bender]

Using a less expensive materials makes sense if this is not your last bench. Think of it as a prototype so you can figure out just what you want long term. My first bench lasted about a decade and is still in use as a secondary bench, mostly used to store 'in process' parts.

Thanks for the compliments on my bench, It really benefitted from my lifetime development process.