Hi Guys, I have to disagree with the guy that said it is not a nice looking
wood. I have a floor in my den made with larch and I have received many
compliments and most of those people have since install a larch floor
themselves. The only problem that I have had with the floor is under my
computer chair, those little wheels will raise hell out of a wood floor so I
had to go to staples and buy a plastic mat.

My floor is wide boards, screwed down and plugged on top. The only problem
I had was that I did all the planing myself and I should have made a jig for
the planer to hold the boards on edge. Some of them rolled on me and made
the edge less than 90 degrees and as a result I had some cracks. The main
thing with larch, you MUST keep it out of the sun. It will twist like hell
in the sun in just one day. I had the mill save them for me and keep them
inside out of the sun and I would pick up whatever they had every week.
They did not have a lot, they were just a few logs mixed with the spruce. I
am in Nova Scotia Canada and our Larch, is also know as hamatack, tamerack
and some idiots call in juniper but juniper is a bush around here. It was
hard to plane, simply because it is an oily wood and the feed roller did not
want to feed it. I solved that problem and I would not do without it. I
bolted a 1/8 inch high density plastic on the two front corners and I have
never push another piece thought the planer. It does bow up between the
bolts but it flattens when you feed wood in. I never had to clean the
shaving underneath. I have told other people that had feeding problems
about my cure and they tried it and they would not do without it now. It is
cheap and makes a day in the shop a lot more enjoyable.

Eric

"George" george@least wrote in message
...

"Andy Dingley" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 20:52:06 GMT, "toller" wrote:

From what I have read, larch is a perfectly good wood as long as you
avoid
the knots. It simply isn't particulary attractive. Would that be about
right? Any problems with it?

Very prone to twist on seasoning. Apart from that it it's fine. My
bench underframe is made of it, although it's too soft to make a good
top. I do use it for "indoor" work on rough stuff like bech frames,
but mostly it's for exterior timber framing. Being highly resinous, it
lasts longer than Easter Red Cedar (UK climate).

Most stupid thing I've done in the last few years was _not_ buying 10
acres of woodland, just because I didn't like the fact it was larch.
Since then I've used a lot more larch and even got quite fond of it.

Of course, Andy's stuff is European, but ought to be close. Western is
lumped with Douglas fir in the trade, which is a pretty good indicator of
what it's like. Eastern might as well be a different tree when close
grown
versus open grown. Open grows right and left twists between alternate
spread of branches, and is therefore a perfect bitch to control. Close
grown loses the habit in favor of racing for the light in competition with
others. It's some pretty stuff, though a touch yellower than DF.

Up here it was the preferred wood for mine lagging. I've about eight
acres
or so where it thrives in the transition between higher hardwood and lower
swamp conifers.