I’m hopefully within a month or two of starting my benchwork. Have a couple of the MRR books that give guidelines on wood, some important points:
(1) Use grade 2 or better (i.e. knots don’t go through whole diameter of the lumber)
(2) Some mild warping or cupping is OK, but avoit twisted pieces
My question is concerning type of wood. Most threads don’t say too much about it. Seems like many have used pine, but I recall a thread a few months ago that indicated birch or fir are better choices. Couldn’t find that discussion on thread search today.
Anyway, any reccs? Yes, I realize birch/fir would be harder to find and more expensive than pine (prob. have to get at a local lumber store rather than Lowe’s or HD).
I guess it depends on where the ayout will be and what sort of treatment you will be doing to hide the benchwork, if any. IE, if this is being built in the family portion of the house, where people will see it all the time - I’d consider using very nice quality wood and making it like fine furniture. If the layout is in the basement and you will put up skirting around it and never see the undersides, I’d just use reasonably good wood to get a solid and level structure.
I also think a lot of people go overboard on the benchwork. The key requirements are that it is solid, level, and stable so someone bumping against the edge doesn’t send a scale 12.0 earthquake across the layout. If your area is reasonably temperature and humidity (especially humidity) controlled, you should have no problems with warping and twisting once things are all fastened together, even using the ‘inferior’ pine from Home Depot. I love the ones who use girders so sturdy you could park a car on the layout, when it’s a shelf-type layout and is narrow enough that you can easily reach everythign without so much as leaning on the layout surface. In certain cases you may need extra-strong support - for example, the raised floor section in a mushroom layout like Joe Fugate’s - the floor has to withstand people standing and walking on it, and needs to be appropriately constructed, but for the general layout, imo all that extra structure is just a waste of wood, time, and money.
I personally like birch better because pine is very soft. Birch also has a more finished look and feel to it. That said, I have enough of both to rebuild my layout after our move, and I’ve never considered scrapping the pine and replacing it all with birch. The knots don’t bother me. If they are bad enough I just cut out that section. If I were starting from scratch and the price difference wasn’t going to cause me to go into convulsions, I’d use birch.
But I’m with Randy, I scratch my head every time somebody comments that Jabba the Hut can stand on their benchwork. It needs to be solid, but solid is a relative statement.
I use 1 x 3 pine lumber (usually called furring strips) but this is the milled lumber and not the junk wood they sell you for furring strips. (at least my local lumber yard sells the 1 x 3s for furring strips - which are almost as good as #1 lumber)
Most visitors to my layout can not understand how I can build such a strong frame just using 1 x 3 pine. But I build the frames and cross bracing 16" on center and use the OSB sub base to keep everything straight and square.
i had made a small christmas tree layout from #1pine and it cost $50.00 that sure stopped me from using it for my o gauge layout which will be 20’ down one side 16’ across the back and 20’ down the other side of the train shed.i switched to rough cut hemlock of true 1"x 3"x10’ boards for a lot less than finished lumber.check in your area and see if there are any amish saw mills,and tell them what you require.the only downside it may take a little longer to level.also the wood can be assembled either green or dried when dried it is much lighter.i would show you pictures but ijust don`t understand how to send them.
I am a woodworker [cabinetmaker], so I have the tools to do the benchwork. I used ash lumber for the framework and 3/8" Baltic birch ply for the tabletop [under foam]. Overkill? Perhaps, but I use the same techniques I use for cabinets and it will support an elephant [figure of speech; I haven’t tested it with an elephant]. I bought the 1"x4"x8’ finished ash from a home manufacturer when they changed colors and closed out what they had left over. I have often bought cut-offs [under 3’ in length] for very little. I buy the Baltic birch retail, but it is so much better than fir plywood – smooth surface with no voids. However, with sturdiness comes weight. The modules are heavy, so not for portable layouts.
I guess part of my question relates to humidity/temperature sensitivity. My layout will be in my basement here in Ohio, and although I have a humidfier in my furnace system during the winter and use a dehumidifier in the summer, I am a bit concerned about expansion/contraction issues with extremes of temparature/humidity changes. Any of these woods better at tolerating these extremes? I would guess most wood types could all have expansion/contraction issues.
I purchase a 4’ x 8’ sheet of 3/4" A-C plywood sanded on one side and have the lumber yard cut it into 3.5" strips. One sheet gives me 16 eight foot 1x4 boards, very staright, strong and will not warp. When I build my benchwork (dominoes), I make sure that the sanded side is turned out.
As you may have realized by now, not all pine is created equal. I have encountered some I could gouge with a thumbnail, and some that was resistant to anything short of a jackhammer.
The real key is, what is going to happen in the space where the layout is being built? In my case, every sample of wood, from southern yellow pine through ponderosa pine, Douglas fir and even redwood, developed strange warps, twists and wiggles after having been baked in very low humidity in my garage. Even plywood was not, and is not, immune.
My personal solution was to go with steel! Steel studs make good L (C?) girders, good joists and good risers (after a little creative snipping and bending.) They may expand and contract, but they don’t become compound bows or corkscrews. They also provide natural chases, which helps to keep the wiring neat. As icing on the cake, they aren’t much more expensive than wood.
One solution. I don’t say it would be best for everyone. It does work for me.
When I hit the Powerball this evening (all 116 mill of it) I’m going to construct my 3700 plus square foot layout using birch - as you have probably surmised I have a very active/overactive imagination - and you know what? that imagination only costs me a couple of bucks a week for lottery tickets!! Tomorrow morning, when I am awake and have my feet on solid ground once again, I will probably go off to my building materials center and buy a sheet of CD plywood and cry all the way home over its cost.
If your address is in a subdivision called “Bill Gates Estates” there, jbloch, I would advise you to use birch for your benchwork; its strength is worth the additional expense. I myself live on “Poverty Acres” so its:
HI-HO!!! HI-HO!!!
ITS OFF TO MY HOME DESPOT OR LOWE’S I GO!!!
…at least for my model railroading needs. I have used some upscale/exotic woods over the years for some of my cabinetmaking projects but economics has pretty well confined me to the use of pines for my model railroad benchwork. Occasionally - and it is an extremely rare occurance - I will encounter fir at my local building materials center; once (I keep thinking that there was even a second occurance) I stumbled onto birch which, so the salesman informed me, had been delivered by mistake. I couldn’t really afford very much and by the time I found a cart and got back into lumber it had been pretty well picked over. But it was nice finding it. Now, when I go shopping at my local building materials center I always take a cart into the lumber area no matter what my purchase intentions are. You never can tell…! My shouts of glee eminating from the “indoor” lumber yard announce to the rest of the store my discovery of a “bargain”.
I definitely am not a professional cabinetmaker as one of your respondants here is; nevertheless I do have a cer
I used the elast expensive pine 1X2 and 1X3 in my basement layout here in Iowa. Like you, I run a dehumidifier in summer but not a humidifier in winter. My house seems to be sealed tightly enough that I don’t need it. But (as Charlie Weaver used to say), I digress. I bought my lumber a couple months before I was ready to use it and stored it in the basement in fairly loose piles. This allow the lumber to adjust to the area.
The room stays at a fairly constant 60-70 degrees, winter and summer and I have had no problems with expansion/contraction. The house is about 100 years old. One thing I did is use the Rustoleum epoxy paint with the flecks to seal the entire basement floor. It really helps in controlling moisture and dust.
I picked up (or personally hand chose) my benchwork wood from Home Depot. I ended up using pine but good quality pine with little to no knots. The pieces were pretty much all dead on straight with no cupping or bending. My bench top is foam so I didn’t go with a plywood top. For a 4 x 8 layout, the wood, hardware, and 1-1/2 extruded foam insulation came to ~$50.
You could rip down either pine or birch plywood and use it for both the bench top AND benchwork frame (i.e. legs, supports, bracing, etc.) That would make for a VERY solid base for your layout.
Nothing I stated in my post was meant to imply that I was unhappy with Home Despot - or Lowe’s either for that matter. I’ve usually been able to pick through their supply of wood and find things relatively knot-free. My major complaint with Home Despot has nothing to do with the quality of merchandise handled by them; rather it is that Home Despot has invented “Stealth” Technology for humans. Clerks can be more elusive than dumb blonde nymphomaniacs who own liquor stores; and when you do observe one they can disappear quicker than you can even think about it.
True story: This did not happen in the “indoor” lumber yard by the way. I was looking for something and there wasn’t a clerk to be had anywhere; then. out of nowhere, one walked past in that center aisle common to all Home Despots. I didn’t run but neither did any grass grow under my feet as I pursued this individual; I got out to the center aisle and turned in the direction of his last observed movement; he was nowhere to be seen!! AH!HA! He’s in the next (cross) aisle; nope, wasn’t there. The next one; not there either. How about the next one? Nope!!! I even looked up at the ceiling to see if he might have been abducted by one of them thar hovering Flying Saucers from the galaxy Bungabaloney!! This guy had, however, literally disappeared off of the face of the earth in a short half-a-minute.
Most - virtually all really - of the woodwork in my current layout was purchased at Home Depot - Lowe’s were few and far between here in the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west in them thar heady days of yesteryear. They don’t handle much high-grade plywood but I did purchase a sheet of 1/2 inch oak for a project awhile back.
My first major purchase of lumber occurred in 1976 when I was building a platform bed from plans in a Mechanics Illustrated. I wanted to do this in “light” Mahogany and knew I was going to have
In speaking of benchwork snapping because of knots, if the L-girders are supported with 2 x 2 legs at 4 foot spacing there is no way a layout should bever snap a l-girder piece (unless the knot in the wood was as large as the width of the wood)!
Now my 1 x 3s, which actually measure 3/4" by 2", make really light weight benchwork and can support my 250 plus weight easly and this surprizes most visitors. Support (as in 2 x 2 legs at 4 ft spacing and cross joists at 16" spacing or less makes this benchwork strong yet light weight.
This is where a lot of modelers have problems is the too wide of a distance in the leg spacing and cross joists spacing.
As far as my humidity in the basement the dehumidifier runs all summer trying to keep the place less than 70% and I like to keep it above 50% in the winter (which has not been a problem so far).
And when filling a 2200 sq ft basement with layout I do not want nor do I need to spend any more for benchwork than necessary. I would much rather spend the money on more track, buildings, rolling stock and sound engines.
With the trackwork now over 2800 feet and over 300 turnouts and knowing that the benchwork will not give a problem even at 4 leverls high I have been able to show many other modelers and visitors that you do not have to spend a fortune to build solid, yet light wight benchwork.
When I first got into modeling I too was caught up in the heavier is better syndrome but then trying to make changes to the benchwork and/or moving a club I soon learned that there had to be a better way. Taking the ideas from the modules people I applied the methods of 1 x 3 pine (light weight) and never looked back.
And as we all know clubs never have an over abundance of money so finding a less costly way of building bullit proof benchwork had to be found. This was it and I figured if I could walk on our Lionel layout display (which had 15 to 20 feet w
I, personally, couldn’t agree more. Too many people build layout support structure to full scale standards. That HO Y6b weighs about as many grams as the prototype weighed tons, and can safely cross a trestle made of soda straws and toothpicks. Unless you’re planning to stand on it, the benchwork under that trestle doesn’t have to be much stronger. Even if you ARE planning to stand on it, it doesn’t have to be built to Code for an upstairs bedroom floor!
One beauty of L-girder construction is that you can use literally ANYTHING for joists! The L-girders need to be good quality material, but joists can be made from whatever can be scrounged (with permission) from the scrap pile at a construction or demolition site. Other than length, dimensions are not critical. The roadbed (including yards) is supported on risers, so joists can be any height and the top doesn’t have to be square. On my last pre-desert layout I used some 1x that had split lengthwise. It was “useless” to the builder, and seriously ugly, but perfect for me.
As for subroadbed, if you glue (caulk, in my case) flex, the cheapest sheet goods Home Despot or Lowes sells can be cookie-cut to shape and used. If it tends to warp or bow, beat it into submission with extra (opposed) layers, battens or (in my case) chunks of angle iron (3x steel stud material cut lengthwise.) Frequent supports (16 to 24 inch spacing) will eliminate the need for excessive thickness.
Birch is a hardwood and not as plentifull as it used to be twenty or thirty years ago. Most companies like the one I work for will substitute Maple for Birch. Hard White Maple is used when a stain and/or clear finished is to be used. Soft Maple is used when colour does not matter and the product will be painted. However both are extremely hard to work with requiring pre-drilling of holes. Fir on the other hand is quite soft similar to pine. I have had two houses where the trim in both was made from Fir. Unfortunately, when I tried to buy some wood a few years ago to make trim for a renovation project I had to substitute Hemlock for Fir. It gave me the look I wanted and needed, but is was more difficult than Pine to work with. You might want to consider using Poplar. Technically it is considered a hardwood but it is somewhat easier to work with, similar to Pine and does not require predrilling and nails can be driven into it easy enough
I am now contemplating a layout after being out of the hobby for nearly 40 years. I am also trying to decide what to use for the Benchwork. It seems to me that the L-Girder system is more work than using staight lumber. Since I do work for a Commercial Cabinet shop I have more choises then most. We do not use Pine as a rule in our business. We use Poplar, which as mentioned above easy to work with and I beleive more stable dimensionally then Pine. At this point, I have decided to use either 1 1/8" or 1 1/4" x 3" Solid Members for the Benchwork. Since i am building it in modules I can use what we call shorts. Our lumber is purchased in the rough either 4/4 (1"), 6/4 (1 1/2") or 8/4 (2") thick and then dressed to the desired thickness. In every bundle there are pieces that are considered short, usually 6 ft. or less. Working with modules that will not exceed 5 ft I can then accomodate thees shorts. I would think that most cabinet shops or lumber dealers would be happy to get rid of their shorts and would in all likely hood would sell it to you for a goo
I’ve used fir, birch, pine, ash, cedar and others I can’t remember right off hand. They were all good. In Louisiana, pine is most common, so that’s mostly what I use.