Thread: Douglas-Fir/Oregon Alternatives

Tas oak should be fine, can't think of anything wrong with it, really.

I don't know why you reckon Oregon would be difficult to source, or expensive. My rough bench has an all Oregon top (40mm x 200mm from memory) and it can't have been expensive or I wouldn't have bought it. Sourced this from my local Mitre 10. The only trouble with it was that it was unseasoned and shrunk a far bit in the first year.

Tassie Oak will be better, but I think quite a bit more costly.

Your local timber salvage yard will likely have Oregon at reasonable prices. Our local yard generally has a good stock of various sizes of Oregon from house demolitions. All rough milled, but nothing you can't flatten nicely with a decent hand plane.

KD hardwood will cost you twice that of Oregon. Last lot of 75 x 38KD cost me about $6.50/lm & even unseasoned hardwood is similar price last lot of 75 x 50 sawn was about $5.50

Your bench frame doesn't need to be of any particular species. Milled structural pine would probably do & will be cheaper again - 70 x 35 should be about $2.50/lm if cost is an issue, otherwise adjust the design to use 70 x 45 or even 90 x 45. The benefit of hardwood is the density & thus the mass of the frame - more weight means the bench will move less. You can simply beef up the dimensions of the frame if you use pine, or put in a lower shelf & store heavy stuff on it etc. However you say this is only an assembly & machine bench, so mass will be less important & pine would be the cheapest solution & will cetainly last in a workshop..

I would concur with Kman and Poppa here. There is so much recycled oregon around that is very well seasoned it would be not difficult to find some. I picked up three posts 1700x100x100mm that were in a skip from a dismantled pergola after I had started building my bench... but of course I had already laminated some other timber for the legs. You would be welcome to them if I was closer to you as they are just sitting on the floor in the carport.

May I please stick my oar into this.
I suggest that you're better off to find salvage wood for several reasons.
1. Less costly than new.
2. The moisture content of kiln-dried wood will be considerably higher than wood held in service then salvaged. Thus, less shrinkage.
3. Dried in service, let's hope that the wood has developed a "set", that is, it has dried in a straight geometry. As kiln-dried wood continues to dry down, you could very well wind up with a bunch of bananas.
4. By the time the bench is completed, the mass of the whole thing should keep it from jumping around.

In the 4 short years that I lived in Melbourne, everything which was identified as "Oregon" looked like pine to me and probably Pinus radiata. For me to name my Top-10 workable woods, real Douglas-fir would be #11. Pseudotsuga menziesii may be nice for decorative moldings but it splinters badly with cutting and the cellular anatomy makes it difficult to finish (spiral thickening in the S2 wall layer). Even for us here in the Great White North, it isn't cheap. Personally, I'd try very hard to find anything but D-fir for a bench.

My main bench is 240cm x 80cm top made of 5 pc 5cm x 15cm spruce planks. Same for the legs. (That's 8' long, made of 2x6) As the boards dried and shrank, the rain of sawdust on everything stored below eventually provoked me to squirt a bead of bathtub silicone in all the cracks. My island bench is of the same hasty & crude construction. The power miter box, the drill press, the band saw and the scroll saw are bolted into the bench top, each to a side. The last surprise I need is a power tool jumping around in the middle of a job.
By rotating the island bench just a little bit, I can bring in 5m and 6m
wood most of which is out in the hallway, resting on a jack-stand the same height as the chop-saw bed.
The benches are approaching 10 yrs old now. Spruce is soft so lots of nicks and dings but I don't care.

Yesterday I picked up some treated Radiata Pine sleepers to build a retaining wall.
What struck me then, as it has before, is the different densities of timber within this species.I have found the same with what is passed off as Oregon.

I would imagine that if you scrounged enough of either species you coudl select the denser pices and make a good, servicable benchtop.

artme: How true! I pick up one 2x4" and it weighs half what the next one does. Must be more late-wood in each annual growth ring.

Up here, a lot of the construction wood is labelled S - P - F for Spruce (Picea), Pine (Pinus) and Fir (Abies). The mechanical and non-mechanical properties are so similar that nobody makes a fuss.
The hell of it is that in a renovation, nobody saves any of it, not even as stove wood for the snowy winters. I burned more than 4,500kg wood pellets this winter past to keep my kitchen to +17C.

My father made two benches, the decks were 5cm x 30cm SPF and ugly. He skinned each one with Doug.-fir 6mm plywood. They were so clean and lovely and unmarked, we built stuff on the floor!

Anyway, don't forget to put lino or tile on the floor which has a geometric pattern and really get it down straight. I have assembled more crooked woodworkings without it.

Thanks for the tips folks, and sorry for the late reply (net troubles).

Often I get myself all worked up when building something from plans. If a specific timber is mentioned I get it stuck in my head that it has some mystical super powers that when applied to the project make the result something that can withstand shifts in the space/time contiuum and if I use something else, a dirty great black hole will open up and the world will implode

I still haven't had a chance for a decent look in any yards yet but will hopefully be able to give it a red hot go next week. Somewhere in the back of my head I had the thought that if the Yanks use Douglas-Fir for house frames, why wouldn't the pine we use here be just as good. I've also decided that I'd like to make a few additions to the plans so the bench will probably end up just being a prototype anyway (I'm never happy with what I do) so I probably go the pine-in-larger-dimensions route for the time being and save myself the dollars.

Thanks again for the advice. I'll try to keep it all in mind the next time I'm worried I'll cause the destruction of the universe

My current ( second temporary) bench is recycled oregon and is about 10 years old now. This bench has been modified as time goes on and I see other ideas on this site. I have fitted a larger vice so had to mangle things a bit it get a fit. Toying with some form of tail vise next as another retro fit.I plan a real hardwood bench one day so on the todo list and all that.
Anyhoo the real point of this is that oregon will build a perfectly serviceable bench and I reckon recycled is the way to go not only for cost but it is already very well seasoned and stable. I built the whole thing for just over $50 not counting a vice. Check out demolition yards. You get some nail holes but they can be filled if you are worried about the look.
Regards
John

While Douglas-fir has been used for house framing, what's left in the past 50 years is now far too expensive to hide in the walls. SPF 5x10's on 40cm spacing is standard now. Some homes are framed with 5x20's for more insulation space but the initial material cost goes up, out of proportion to the increased stick size. A lot is used in exposed framing, 30x60cm, glue-lam beams for example in atriums (atria) of large buildings.
I had a summer home on a lake, built in 1912. 2 knots in two rafters and the rest was clear 100% Df. The down-side is that Df toughens up as it ages. Want to put in a picture hook? Drill a hole for the nail, first. Nightmare wood.
My SPF bench is a means to an end.

G'day Redshirtguy

I'll chime in to support the recycled hardwood and oregon thoughts. Just after Christmas last year I finished my bench using nice old vic ash studs and oregon boards from a demolished shed, and part of an old oregon beam removed from my Dad's place.
The oregon beam made the legs, ash studs made the rails, and the oregon and ash boards made up the top. Like one of the other fellas has mentioned, if you don't mind pulling a few nails, and leaving some original housing rebates you can get not a bad look. Those old timbers come up pretty sweet with a natural finish.
After a bit of a sand, I sanding sealed twice (cutting back between coats), one or two brush coats of shellac, then a few thin rubbers.
I fitted Dawn #10 vices as face and tail vices, which i got for a bargain, but were the most expensive part. All up the bench would have cost maybe $150+ time.
The bench lives outside under a carport, but one thing I would warn against is the risk of joining hard and soft timbers on a top. I combined hardwood (front half of bench), with oregon (back half and tool well) as a matter of economy and interest. As a result the top gets a bit of movement (cupping) in differing temperatures. Still, I absolutely love it and it serves well as a solid place to work after hours out back of my unit.
I've included a couple of photos of full view and a close up to show the difference between the oregon and ash...

Cheers all!

Oooh, nice lookin' bench and materials. Thanks for the pics.

For work at the moment I'm involved (labouring) in the restoration of an 1876 railway station (Noel: Come say g'day ) and would luuuuuurv to have some of the timber there, esp. the flooring, but the place is pretty run down and whatever is salvagable is going back into it for historical purposes.

Still, fingers crossed I can get to some salvage yards on Wed for a look-see. The costs you guys are chucking around are pretty encouraging even if I do end up doing a Franken-bench.

For me, that is a bench to die for. Life for me has demanded such expediencies, my SPF bench is as good as it gets. That's OK, I got a lot built on that puppy.

I meant to add that we get any needed quantity of Douglas-fir plywood, any thickness you need (50mm?, 75mm?) but the core is SPF and to buy "Good-Two-Sides" is obscene.

You bench guys are serious. I like to see what a woodworker's bench needs to be. I do a lot of my carving in Western Red Cedar (free wood) but I need to tie it down for the major work.