Wood Choice For Bench Top?

[custard]

I'll be making myself a new workbench in about a year's time, so I'm starting to research plans and gather materials. I'm wrestling with the question of what's the best choice of wood for the top?

The criteria are, in rough priority order,

1. Stability. I want to use the work top as a reference surface, so I'm looking for a wood with extremely small movement in service. My current beech topped bench is a disaster in this respect, even though it's laminated from multiple pieces it's spent the last twenty years twisting every which way! I'm looking for something that needs no more than a light skim every now and again to keep it true.
2. Available in 3"+ thickness and in over 6'+ straight grained lengths. Ideally I'd like 4" for the legs but I'd be prepared to laminate or use a different wood for the frame.
3. Reasonable availability, although with over a year to go I can hunt around.
4. Light colour.
5. Hard, heavy and close grained.
6. Price, I've budgetted about £250 for the top alone, which in the design I'll probably use means a wood price of about £80-85 a cubic foot.

So far the closest fit I've found is Padauk. But the problem is the colour, bright red fading to dark brown isn't what I'm looking for. I want a timber that will bounce light back onto the work and brighten up the workshop.

Can Padauk be successfully bleached? Or does anyone have any better suggestions?

 

[mtr1]

Think I would use European white ash if I was making another bench, or perhaps southern yellow pine. Both can be had at reasonable prices, are both light in color, and more stable than beech.

 

[Benchwayze]

+1 for Ash or SYP on the issue of price and colour.

If you want a hard surface and a light colour then use Ash.

If you are not the sort to ill-treat a benchtop, then SYP although softer, will work and is a little less expensive than Ash.

Either way look to jointing 3 x 2s or even 4 x 2s for a solid, and stable top.

HTH
John

 

[Racers]

Hi,

How about Maple?

Pete

 

[custard]

Thanks for the ash and maple suggestions. I agree they're both more stable than beech, and readily available in large dimensions at a reasonable price, but as I understand it for really exceptional stability it'll have to be a tropical or sub-tropical hardwood with the possible exception of steamed pear?

 

[mtr1]

Cuban Mahogany it is then...

Most commercially available exotic timber is dark, some of it can be unstable, and there is the cost too. If you are making it in a years time, buy the ash/maple/syp now and part machine it. By the time you get round to making it, it should of acclimatised nicely.

 

[matthewwh]

Aha!

I sussed this one a while back - 'taint the beech that's the problem - or wasn't in my case. I had forgotten to strip the lacquer off the underside of the bench, so one face was breathing and the other wasn't.

A few minutes with a cabinet scraper on the underside and the difference is like night and day.

As long as your timber is well air dried and both faces are treated equally you will have a flat top that stays that way.

 

[yetloh]

I would go with the maple - pale, hard, heavy and pretty stable. Well worth the money - make it as thick as you can afford and handle.

Jim

 

[woodbloke]

Aha!

I sussed this one a while back - 'taint the beech that's the problem - or wasn't in my case. I had forgotten to strip the lacquer off the underside of the bench, so one face was breathing and the other wasn't.

A few minutes with a cabinet scraper on the underside and the difference is like night and day.

As long as your timber is well air dried and both faces are treated equally you will have a flat top that stays that way.

Same here. I've got a 75mm thick beech top on my bench which has remained pretty stable over the last few years or so. It has moved a little in certain places but nothing to worry about. What's more important is the grain orinetation in the way you join the various bits together. I would tend to go for the end grain horizontal in all seperate pieces (much the same as you'd look for in a wooden jack plane) so that shrinkage, when it occurs, will be across the width of the top rather than the thickness. If the grain is mixed up (some vertical, other bits horizontal and some diagonal) then any movement will be haphazard at best.
Were I to make another bench, I wouldn't use solid timber at all. Three or four layers of 18mm mdf with a sacrifical oiled hardboard top (a much under-rated material IMO) will provide a really solid, heavy top which is guaranteed to be true - Rob

 

[Mike Wingate]

I instantly thought beech, then read about your problems. All my school bences have 14" x 3" slabs of beech, not sure if they are twisted. At school I use my Mahogany bench. At home my larger Pitch Pine bench. No problem with either.

 

[bosshogg]

Why not go for a door blank for the top and redwood for the base. My bench is built from these (except the redwood) and in the 12 plus years of service there has been no appreciable movement what so ever. It has been in an attic (don't ask me how I got it up there, Phew) and in a garden shed, before it's final working environment, my workshop (glorified shed) so it's had to deal with quite a bit of changing environments and humidity level changes...no movement.
You can get blanks standard up to 54mm thick, I think mine is 50mm, no requirement for support stretchers under them, I made my frame frame from stable whitewood and used M&T joints throughout except the two top cross stretchers, which I bridled and allowed the stretchers to project 6mm above the legs, to allow unimpeded movement of the long grain, so both move in close symmetry and the top remains flat.
You can get door blanks in the veneer/ply of your choice and run edging around it in matching wood, incorporating vice or vices to your own spec...bosshogg

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Albert Einstein (hammer)

 

[beech1948]

Hi,
My bench has a 4" thick top x 28" made of quarter sawn air dried Beech.

No movement at all except a very minor seasonal change as we go into Fall ( I spent too much time working in the US) and Winter. No twists, no cupping.

I consider it to be very stable and flat and would use this again.

I made the bench like this after using what is now a 90 yr old bench made the same way. This used to belong to a Cabinetmaker in the village who kept it until he died and then his widow sold it to me. Its dirty and needs to be planed all over but only to remove the dirt and reveal the pale white Beech. After 90 years it also needs some small amount of TLC to make it good for another 90.

The problem with laminated beech is that you will get uneven moisture take-up and drying so will get twists. Also through-and-through sawn beech will move but quarter sawn is much more stable.

Ash will be fine but not quite as sound as a good Beech top.

regards
Alan

 

[Shrubby]

My benches are both beech - the smaller one is oil impregnated and has never moved,the other massive Emir moved a little when first moved from a barn into a bone dry workshop and never since.
Every European manufacturer I can think of uses beech,Epple even build cnc machines from it. I think its all in the conditioning,selection and construction
If you want to engineer a top you could vertically laminate strips of birch ply with epoxy or resorcinol type glue
Matt

 

[Peter Sefton]

The benches I made for my workshop are all 40mm Beech, I use solid kitchen work tops from Magnets or other suppliers you can get then in 3 or 4 m lengths so can make 2 shorter benches or have 1 bench 80mm thick I find 40mm with aprons great. Beech can move more than other timbers but is traditional for workbenches. Very hard wearing but all usual rules apply as regards movement control, mine are finished in Danish oil both sides! And have stayed very flat. These kitchen worktops are usually made of short strips re glued this helps to keep them flat.

Best of luck Peter

 

[LuptonM]

Probably easier to use wooden worktop. Thick wood is unlikely to warp that much

For a 2m long bench by 65cm x 8cm deep it would cost £150 for the top if made out of beech staves

search ebay eg http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RUSTIC-BEECH- ... 4aa82bfb39

Or you could wait for some worktops to go cheap locally on ebay if they only offer pickup