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questions from

Our Readers

vertical-grain

Douglas Fir

In issue No. 80, you featured a tool cabinet made out of Douglas fir. When I tried to buy Douglas fir locally, all I could find ivas framing lumber and it doesn't look anything like the wood you used. Why is this?

Art Beauchamp Baton Rouge, M

Whenever we build projects out of Douglas fir, we typically use ordinary framing lumber (commonly known as "two-by" stock). But for the heirloom tool cabinet in Issue No. 80, as well as the workbench on page 16 of this issue, we used vertical-grain Douglas fir.

Vertical-grain Douglas fir isn't a different species or type of wood. Instead, this wood gets its name from the way it's cut at the sawmill. If you take a look at the end of a piece of vertical-grain fir, you'll see that the growth rings run nearly perpendicular to the face of the board, producing a straight, even grain pattern.

Vertical Grain. If you look at the end of this board, you can see that the grain runs vertically.

m Horizontal Grain. Most construction lumber has grain that runs horizontally or in arcs.

On the other hand, most framing lumber has grain that runs almost parallel with the face of the board, typically resulting in a loose, wavy grain pattern. (See photos in margin at left for comparison.)

Growth Rings. Just as important as the grain direction is the tree that the wood comes from. The best-looking fir comes from trees that grow up in mature, established forests. These trees grow slowly because they're competing with neighboring trees for light, air, and soil nutrients. And the slower a tree grows, the closer the annual growth rings are spaced, resulting in a tighter grain pattern.

On the other hand, trees that are commercially planted and harvested tend to mature much quicker. And as a result, they have wider-spaced growth rings.

Sources. Vertical-grain Douglas fir isn't something you're likely to find at your local home center. You'll have better luck trying a traditional lumber dealer. And you may even have to special-order the wood. But be prepared for a little sticker shock. Because of the waste involved in sawing logs into vertical-grain boards, you can expect to pay three to four times more than you would for run-of-the-mill framing lumber.

Technique:

Grain Matching

Matching grain between boards is a concern whenever you're gluing up a panel. But when it came to gluing up the legs for the

workbench in this issue, I faced a different kind of challenge. I wanted all four faces of each leg to look similar. To do this, I selected boards with grain running diagonally to the face of the board. This way, the grain on the edges of the two leg halves looks the same as the grain on die faces of the boards (see photo).

50 ShopNotes No. 84

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