Bench top

[poolhound]

I know that one of the preferred woods for a bench top is hard maple but what do you folks think of using oak. I have a contact where I can get some reclaimed 12/4 Oak for a very good price. I am getting a sample and if the core is solid once jointed and planed I thought it might make a good benchtop. My biggest concern is that Oak obviously has a very pronounced and often deep grain.

Your thoughts and opinions, as always, are appreciated.

[cabinetman]

You're right about the grain if it's Red Oak. If it's White Oak, it will be a closed pore wood. For a bench top, 12/4 sounds like a little overkill, but would sure be solid. If it was up to me, I might save that thick stock for another project. A suggestion for a bench top would be to top whatever substrate you use with 1/4" tempered masonite. It's cheap, hard, and easily replaceable.

It's heartbreaking the first time you damage your new top. Using the hardboard will take the beatings, glue, and whatever coffee you spill.
.

[Uncle Cracker]

Oak has a nasty habit of raising its grain when wet. Even if you finish it, a benchtop tends to get nicks, scrapes and such, and any water you let on there will give it goosebumps. Hard maple has less tendency to do this. I'd go with C-Man's suggestion of maybe a double thickness of 3/4" ply with a Masonite topper for your primary workspace, and if your bench is large enough for two work areas, try topping one of them with short-nap carpet (in a dark color). Things don't roll off or out of sight, sound is muffled, work pieces don't get dinged up as much, and you can easily replace it with a fresh piece when it gets ragged. Having one hard surface and one padded one gives you the option to choose which works best for any particular project.

[JimD]

Traditional bench top is maple or beech and is for a bench to be used with hand tools. The wood top is forgiving if a tools edge touches it. I mostly use power tools so my bench top is 1/4 plywood over 3/4 plywood orver a torsion box (Norm's idea but I didn't buy his plans). The 1/4 plywood is about due to be replaced with 1/4 hardboard (i.e. it's in bad shape). The top is edged in scrap oak, however, which is holding up fine.

My point is that if your bench is to be used exclusively with hand tools and not as an assembly table, table saw outfeed table, and to support other household projects then it may make sense to use a hardwood top. If it will get used like mine does, you will ruin the top regardless of what hardwood you use and should take C-mans advice IMHO.

If it is a handwork bench, then I do not see why oak wouldn't work fine. It is as hard as hard maple. It will stain more readily due to the open pores but if you take care of it, that should not be a big deal. It is at least as strong as maple or beech and is also similar in weight. In my experience, all wood raises the grain when wet. I do not find oak to be worse than maple. You have to sand both after the first coat of finish to get rid of the raised grain.

Jim

[Knottscott]

Maple and beech have some physical advantages, but I've heard of others using oak successfully in that application. In fact, one of the prettiest work benches I've ever seen was oak. Heck, I've heard of people using pine successfully, so oak should seem like a huge step up from that.

[poolhound]

You're right about the grain if it's Red Oak. If it's White Oak, it will be a closed pore wood. For a bench top, 12/4 sounds like a little overkill, but would sure be solid. If it was up to me, I might save that thick stock for another project. A suggestion for a bench top would be to top whatever substrate you use with 1/4" tempered masonite. It's cheap, hard, and easily replaceable.

It's heartbreaking the first time you damage your new top. Using the hardboard will take the beatings, glue, and whatever coffee you spill.
.

I wasnt thinking of making it 12/4 thick thats just the size of the pieces I know are available and when he told me what he had, a new benchtop came to mind.

I mostly agree with everybodies comments hence my angst. Right now I have 2 benches, one very solid 72"x30" fixed into a corner that has a multilayer ply laminated top with a removeable hardboard skin. The other is smaller 60"x24" and sits against a side wall. Its a simple 2x4 and MDF construction I picked up at a yard sale for $5 about 6 months agao. I have made it more sturdy adding shelves and braces and I bring it out to use and am on my 2nd version of a caster system and levelers to make it easy to move and use although as it gets heavier that is becomming more difficult.

My biggest issue is having a good guaranteed flat solid surface as the MDF top of this bench isnt really flat. Thats primarily why I was thinking about using this Oak to replace the top. To be honest having looked at how this bench was orginally constructed and what it will take to remove the top a whole new solid Oak bench may be easier

[poolhound]

Maple and beech have some physical advantages, but I've heard of others using oak successfully in that application. In fact, one of the prettiest work benches I've ever seen was oak. Heck, I've heard of people using pine successfully, so oak should seem like a huge step up from that.

Good point, I got a bunch of pine lying around maybe I should use that

[ironhat]

<snip>
It's heartbreaking the first time you damage your new top. Using the hardboard will take the beatings, glue, and whatever coffee you spill.
.

I'm with c-man on this one. While I marvel at beautiful workbenches and consider many a piece of functional art, my needs differ due to the diminutive size of my shop. For me a top of plywood (1.5") topped with tempered hardboard offers the ability to use it for fastening jigs or securing a dust port directly to the table with no thought of damage to a fine table. The hardboard has been on mine for three years and though it has many holes it is in fine enough shape for several more. The downside is that I built this bench in haste and it has no overhang and I'm about at my end of putting up with the inability to clamp things to the top. I'll either have to rebuild or add a clamping rim to the bench. Being cheap and perpetually pinched for time it wll probabaly be the latter.

[SARGE..g-47]

I have made one from red and one from white oak, Jon. Worked fine and all are still in use in others shops. I have made two of Hickory and one of ash. Both worked fine and still in use in others shops. I have made several from laminated ply with a hard-board top as I just gave one to Thyman from this forum Monday. I have made 4 from Southern Yellow pine and the same scenario.

I built a new top for myself three weeks ago. Purchased the stock on Friday morning and transferred vises the following Monday. It is Southern Yellow Pine and cost around $25 with a bottle of new glue. I use Doug fir for bases and they work fine also. When I build a bench, I always make the top 3" thick by face glueing as that is my intention. I want weight as I use gravity and a bullet shaped dowel on top of the 4 legs to hold it down. Two people can lift them off in seconds to move.. or adjust vises.. etc.

Work-benchs can be made from about any wood and be sucessful, IMO. They should be jointed well to resist rack if you hand-plane. If you put scars on top as I do (I often just nail a batten down to use as a stop).. you can fill them with wood filler or bondo and sand it it you prefer no un-sightly holes. But... work-benches should be made for work and not dining. They are blue collar producing for white collar.

Good luck...

[ironhat]

Sarge, looking at the picture of the end without the top attached what are the holes just below the dowel pins? Secondly, I believe that you're taking lessons from Rod on shop cleanliness and order!

[poolhound]

Sarge, looking at the picture of the end without the top attached what are the holes just below the dowel pins? Secondly, I believe that you're taking lessons from Rod on shop cleanliness and order!

I thought the same thing, I think they are to do with the end vise - Sarge?

[poolhound]

I have made one from red and one from white oak, Jon. Worked fine and all are still in use in others shops. I have made two of Hickory and one of ash. Both worked fine and still in use in others shops. I have made several from laminated ply with a hard-board top as I just gave one to Thyman from this forum Monday. I have made 4 from Southern Yellow pine and the same scenario.

I built a new top for myself three weeks ago. Purchased the stock on Friday morning and transferred vises the following Monday. It is Southern Yellow Pine and cost around $25 with a bottle of new glue. I use Doug fir for bases and they work fine also. When I build a bench, I always make the top 3" thick by face glueing as that is my intention. I want weight as I use gravity and a bullet shaped dowel on top of the 4 legs to hold it down. Two people can lift them off in seconds to move.. or adjust vises.. etc.

Work-benchs can be made from about any wood and be sucessful, IMO. They should be jointed well to resist rack if you hand-plane. If you put scars on top as I do (I often just nail a batten down to use as a stop).. you can fill them with wood filler or bondo and sand it it you prefer no un-sightly holes. But... work-benches should be made for work and not dining. They are blue collar producing for white collar.

Good luck...

Thanks Sarge, thats what I love about this forum, so much real life expereince. I am very jealous of you and other folks who can have a bench permanently set in the middle of their workspace. All my benches and tools need to be moveable.

I love the simplicity of your bench design. looks strong and most important highly functional. My biggest concern is that the construction of the simple frame on my current bench wont easily come apart and that I could end up having to make a whole new bench. Definatley a project for the future but I have too many already in the pipe.

[LarryG]

Sarge is exactly right, on two counts. The wood species used for a workbench is almost immaterial (within reason); far more important are the details of its construction. And a bench should be made to work, not look pretty. Any scars it may bear are signs it is earning an honest living.

My next bench will be built of Southern yellow pine -- a wood that is cheap, plentiful, readily available to me, and actually stiffer than most of the bench-building woods one would generally assume to be superior (i.e., beech, maple, ash, red or white oak). I have a stack of SYP 2x10s acclimating on my shop's floor right now; they will probably become part of the top. I'll buy the rest of what I need on Saturday morning and expect to get the project under way a few weeks later, when everything has gotten down to around 9-10% moisture content.

Chiz, the holes are for the twin screws of Sarge's end vise to slide through.

[SARGE..g-47]

Sarge, looking at the picture of the end without the top attached what are the holes just below the dowel pins? Secondly, I believe that you're taking lessons from Rod on shop cleanliness and order!

LV twin screw would be correct, Chiz. Which I love BTW. I can clamp a panel between the screws and hand cut dove-tails just to mention one advantage of it. The draw-back to that vise is it cost more than the entire bench by far as the Douf fir I used for that base was originally a single beam several hundred years old that I recovered for "free" when they tore down a civil war ware-house by the railroad yards here in Atlanta.

I had ripping it into 4/4 to use and then decided to re-laminate it to get the 3 3/4" squares for the legs. Once that one was built.. Doug fir became my base material on all benches I make. I usually make one every summer to sale or for a friend at cost during the humid months here in Atlanta. I may not this year as my wife has me busy on an entire bed-room suite (bed and one chest of drawers complete since Oct.) and I am snowed under.

Regards...

[Uncle Cracker]

Hey Sarge, nice curls! I love the shavings from a well-tuned plane.