On Sun, 18 Dec 2005 14:06:07 -0500, "Pawel" wrote:

So i got my first router and after few plays with making garage shelfs i
want to make a real bookcase.
I was thinking of starting with pine, but am afraid that it may be to soft
to last as a nice bookcase.
Is douglas fir a reasonable compromise? or maybe i can make it with pine and
make surface harder by
finishing. Or shall i take it all in stride and make it from oak: oak
plywood with oak boards for walls and shelf edges. Any advice is welcome.

Pawel


If you are wanting to do this project as a first project in "fine
woodworking", my advice would be to avoid the tempation to "save" money by
using pine since it is relatively cheaper than other woods.

That was my thought process upon my first foray into fine woodworking
with the idea that as a novice, I didn't want to screw up really expensive
wood, so I'd use pine. I went to a reputable hardwood dealer and bought
furniture grade pine, so moisture content wasn't an issue. What I listed
on my lessons learned was that a) It is too easily damaged, just looking at
this material puts dings and dents into it. b) The pine available is so
unstable it is difficult to get any kind of accurate cut. Even beginning
with an accurate cut, the wood will later bow and throw later machining out
of line. This especially affected the ability to produce quality mortise
and tenon joints. The wood that started out parallel, moved sufficiently
to preclude the ability to permint gap-less joints.

Two reasonably inexpensive hardwoods to start working with are Poplar and
Ash. Ash is nice because, although fairly non-descript, you can get a
fairly nice finish on the wood and it will look nice. Poplar has too much
green color in it to want to leave it unpainted. In my area, Ash is
actually cheaper than Poplar at about $2.25 / BF. You should be able to
make a bookshelf from for pretty close to what pine would cost and you will
save yourself a lot of aggravation.

My $0.02


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If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough

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