Sycamore for a workbench?

[Maurice Metzger]

I was thinking about laminating up some 4/4 quartersawn sycamore for a workbench top. I did a search here, sycamore seems to be mostly used green for turning. Does anyone have any experience working with it?

The American Hardwood Infomation Center website (http://www.hardwood.org/species_guide/display_species.asp?species=sycamore) has this to say:

The wood machines well, but high speed cutters are needed to prevent chipping. It is resistant to splitting due to the interlocked grain. The wood glues well and stains, with care, to an excellent finish. It dries fairly rapidly, with a tendency to warp. It has moderate shrinkage and little movement in performance.

Thanks in advance for any info,

Maurice

(Edited to remove unimportant info)

[Chris Barton]

Hi Maurice,

A couple of years ago I made a spalted sycamore desk for my older brother and I still have some of the wood. Sycamore would work well for a workbench. Its grain is very tight and it is fairly dense. It machines very well.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

The characteristics that make it a good turning wood make it good as a bench also: Hard, dense, & tight grain.
It's purdy too

[Rob Russell]

It seems to me that using quartersawn sycamore for a workbench is sort of like using tiger or birdseye maple for a workbench. Quartersawn sycamore isn't that easy to find. It's your workbench, so it's obviously your decision - but I'd save the sycamore for something other than a workbench and go find some beech.

[Maurice Metzger]

Rob, Rob, Rob... is this a thinly veiled attempt to get me to reveal my source? You'll have to pry my QS sycamore out of my cold dead hands! And it's nowhere near Connecticut anyway.

Actually I don't know if it can even be found at all. I spotted it on a price sheet after getting home. Just sort of thinking aloud.

Cheers,
Maurice

[Rob Millard]

I recently purchased some quarter sawn sycamore from Groff and Groff ( 5/4 material at a very reasonable price, with excellent figure, and nice widths). While it does machine nicely with both hand and power tools, I was surprised at how unstable it was. Being quarter sawn, I expected it to be stable, but in the rough, the boards were terribly distorted. I re-sawed the lumber for some small Shaker chip boxes, and it remained stable, but the original distortion would make me wonder if it were a good choice for a workbench top, which in order to be effective must remain very flat.

Rob Millard

[Rob Russell]

Rob, Rob, Rob... is this a thinly veiled attempt to get me to reveal my source? You'll have to pry my QS sycamore out of my cold dead hands! And it's nowhere near Connecticut anyway.

Actually I don't know if it can even be found at all. I spotted it on a price sheet after getting home. Just sort of thinking aloud.

Cheers,
Maurice

Steal your source? Wherever El Cerrito is in CA (too lazy to Mapquest it), it's further than I want to drive. :D

Quartersawn sycamore is available around here - my wife was considering it for flooring when we redo our master bedroom. As I remember, milled into flooring it was $6-7/square foot of flooring.

I suggested beech because that's long been used as a workbench material because of it's properties - tough, stands up to the banging a bench takes, etc.

Rob

[Maurice Metzger]

To make this even more confusing, I am actually in northern Virginia visiting relatives. I will probably move here shortly if a job search goes well, I grew up here.

I went to Northland Forest Products in Manassas, VA for the first time. A big difference from California! I bought a small amount of 4/4 quartersawn cherry and didn't look around that much. When I got home I noticed on their price sheet that 4/4 QS sycamore was $3.90 a board foot. They list 4/4 QS white oak at $5.10 a board foot, so that got me interested in the sycamore.

Rob M, thanks for the input. I asked partly because I was a little suspicious of the low(er) price. I wondered if it would turn out to be unstable or unworkable with hand tools.

Rob R, I thought American beech had a reputation for being unstable. Is that right, or am I confusing it with another wood?

Maurice

[Rob Russell]

Rob R, I thought American beech had a reputation for being unstable. Is that right, or am I confusing it with another wood?


All I know is that beech has long been used for bench tops. I seem to remember that it was because beech can have a grain that runs all over the place and wouldn't split as much. We had a huge beech tree just across our back property line that split and dropped one of it's 3 major limbs in our yard. Splitting that up for firewood was a bear because the grain wasn't straight - it went every which way. I know you can get european beech - saw some at an industrial ww show - and that looked really nice.

Someone else may have an opinion. You could also post a question on the Neanderthal Forum about the "best" wood for a workbench top - a number of folks in that group have made their own workbenches.