Folks:
I am about to build a new dining table and want to use a hardwood with a very durable surface since I have young kids. I am thinking that red oak is the best choice. Are there other hardwods I should consider?
Thanks
Cheers,
Velo
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Replies
My wife and I had an oak table handed down from her great grandmother. Built like a rock. Too short, though, so we passed it on to her brother. Other than being too short, the open pores of the oak made me leary about ever spilling anything on it. If you want to still use oak, look for some paste wood filler to fill the poors before finishing it.
I'd suggest hard maple. There's a reason they make cutting boards out of it. Closed pores, dense, etc.. Not as dense as, say, bubinga, but at bargain price compared.
I've got a dining table design I'll build some day when I have a big dining room. That one will be teak or maybe koa. Of course that assumes if I can afford a house with a big dining room I can afford expensive wood to make the table out of.
velomark,
Red oak is a great choice for your table. You're also describing a use that also really calls for a durable varnish finish. My first choice for this kind of thing is always Behlens Rock Hard.
Filling the open pores under a varnish finish is almost always required. The only time I would not fill oak is under an oil or oil/varnish finish, both of which would be completely inadequate for your needs.
Fill with a silex filler. If you are going to stain the wood, you can let the tinted filler accomplish the job by applying it over freshly-sanded wood. It's applied as a thick paste, then rubbed off the surface, and into the pores with corase rags (burlap is often recommended).
If you want to leave the wood unstained (I love the look of natural red oak), use a sanding sealer on the freshly-sanded wood, then use the filler. The filler needs to be tinted a little darker than the wood, if not quite dark, or it will leave the pores with a white residue appearance.
After filling, you can varnish.
Rich
What about Ash. I made us a dining table from ash about 3 years ago and we aree very pleased with how it stands up. Not as much abuse as you suggest though. Ash is similar in hardness to oak and I personaly prefer the grain pattern.
RicS
Brazilian cherry aka jatoba is available quite reasonably. It is harder than almost anything out there that is affordable. Be sure to have carbide jointer knives. I gave up using jatoba because of its hardness. Might be just the thing for kids.
My WOW CD gives the hardness of red oak as 1290 lbs vs 2653 for jatoba. Other data correspondingly varies.
Cadiddlehopper
Well you have posed and interesting question that has no specific answer. It comes down to taste more than practicality. If you like a light finish, hard maple is your best choice. If you want cast iron and dark finish then brazilian cherry(jotuba) is a good choice; hard to work with though. Hickory is the hardest North American hardwood, beautiful tan and cream colors, stains wonderfully, can be hard to work with. White oak is harder than red so it really a matter of what you like. Red oak has been made into probably a million tables so I would not worry about that choice. By the way you don't really need to fill oak unless you want a glass smooth surface. Three coats of lacquer of poly will protect it just fine.
Just made a 10' (6'x4 leaves) out of hickory. Georgous but a little hard to mill and you need to keep the glue up to boards about 4" or less. Hickory can move. Never worked with hickory before, but it is really becoming popular.
Velomark,
I suppose you could try lignum vitae or ebony, or even a nice hard maple. :-)
I went a different route - pine. It survived three kids eating three (and sometimes more) meals a day, and doing school and scout projects on it. It looked like a pine table that had been well used. After all three left home, I hit it lightly with a belt sander. It is still covered with marks, which are just not as deep as they once were. Then I put the same stain on (Minwax Dark Walnut) and gave it three coats of polyurathane. We get a lot of compliments on that table. The signs of use are a good thing. Life happens.
My son is a civil engineer. He suggests making a concrete table. There are a lot of interesting things being done with concrete these days.
Another possibility is to make it out of any wood that you find interesting and put a nice piece of glass over the whole thing. My father is 91 and lives alone. His kitchen table is pine, and covered with thick glass. Easy to clean.
Another possibility is what we do now. My wife is an avid quilter. She made a "table quilt" for the kitchen table. You may ask if anything ever gets spilled on it. Yup. It just goes in the washer.
Life is awash with possibilities. My middle son now has the table that my family used as I was growing up. It was bought in about 1946. It looks now just about like it did the day it was bought. It is made out of a very hard maple. That wood just never even scratched, even though the finish did. I stripped it, and put on an aniline dye stain which brought out the grain more. Then three or four coats of polyurathane, and the table is in its third lifetime. That table will never wear out.
I never tried to solve your problem, just to make it harder by presenting more options. Whatever you do, have fun.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
I'm glad you posted about using pine. I would think that pine tables seriously outnumber oak tables and have been used for centuries.
Pine is an excellent choice and depending on the actual design can make a beautiful table. It's really all a matter of taste.
My preference would be unstained red oak or maple, simply because I like the look of those woods. But any of the commonly available domestic woods can be used without any concern about their ability to stand up to the task. And of, course, any of the more exotic species can be used, depending on how much one wants to spend for material.
Rich
Velomark,
It really does depend on your definition of 'dining table' and what you want. I've had four: two dining room tables and two kitchen tables. The dining room tables were cherry and mahognay that were constantly covered with cloths and pads...no marks. The kitchen tables were 'Rock Maple', actually hard maple made by Hale, and pine. It's impossible to mark up hard maple. The pine showes everything; letters, numbers, etc.....and if I ever tried to remove those marks my children made SWMBO would kill me...so, beware
Velomark,
Pay attention to what BG said about SWMBO and the marks on the pine table. The marked-up pine table becomes a part of family history. When I took the belt sander to mine after 30 years of use, I did it very lightly. My experience with rock maple kitchen tables is identical to BG's also. They don't mark up, but they lack the warmth of the pine table that all of the kids have "had an impact on."MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. Your collective advice is exactly what I needed. Our house is small so the table will need to be multi-purpose. Our kitchen is tiny so we eat all of our meals in the dining room.Thanks agin!Cheers,
Velo
The thought of a table with a bullet-proof wood, with a bullet-proof varnish, that will never look like it has been used it utterly abhorrent to me.
Isn't what's being described readily available at a cheap furniture store (grain-filled Red Oak and rock hard varnish)?
You can do better than that.
Edited 11/8/2006 2:16 pm ET by VeriestTyro
One of the advantages of red oak is that it's readily available in "table top" thickness boards, useable immediately without additional milling (i.e., flat, no cup, bow, or twist) at the Big Box Store as red oak stair treads.
I know, because when we were first married, my wife found an old oak "antique" table, with loads of character, but with only half a top for our dining room table. Her plan was to refinish the base and legs and have me "build us a top for it".
This being my first table top ever, I searched out the local lumber store and found just the stuff - red oak stair tread. Flawless 12" wide boards as flat as glass (OK - 3, 4-inch boards glued up to look like one board, but I couldn't tell then). It was the perfect material for my first table top as glue up was a cinch. SWMBO stained it dark green and I varnished it with 3 coats of well thinned poly, rubbed out with steel wool. Beautiful, practical, and completely indestructible.
So, similar red oak may just be the ticket for your first table as well.
Enjoy!
Mike D :)
Watch out for jatoba. I made the mistake of making the top for an entertainment center out of it. What and idiot. It was impossible to work with hand tools. It is incredibly hard on tools. Spent more time sharpening than working. Also it is extremely dense. A 28X55 top is almost impossible to lift. It is still leaning against the wall in the shop. Redoing the piece in black cherry.
Made a red oak kitchen trestle table 25 years ago. It has survived two kids grown to adulthood and my wife and I. Aside from the need for a sanding and refinish, it is in very good shape.
I made a dining table for my daughter using Eastern Maple for the top. I finished it with several coats of polyurethane colored with burnt umber acrylic paint squeezed right from the tube. Sanded between every coat. After four years, it's still hard as a rock.
George Le Masurier
Velomark,
Let me recommend white oak not red..
first
It's harder
Second
It is water proof (it's what they make wine barrels out of they don't leak with wine I doubt your table will leak with a spilt milk ;-)
Third
It's a lighter color which may or may not be a help depending on what the rest of the house is like..
I'd go for black ash (no the wood is white) about the same reasons
Fourth
I'd go with hard maple
Fifth
Tamarck!
Sixth
Black walnut. works so nice!
Prices!
I buy at wholesale, your price may vary, objects in morror are closer than they appear, close cover before striking,..... ;-)
White oak is cheap at 80 cents a bd.ft red oak is about $1.15 a bd.ft hard maple is $1.85 ash can be had lately as cheap as 65 cents a bd.ft.
If you want an interesting wood with a lot of verigated color in it but extremely cheap look at Tamarack..30 cents a bd.ft. and heartwood is dense as heck actaully heavier than anything except white oak..
Of course my favorite wood to work is Black walnut.. It just works sweeter than heck and makes even a poor woodbasher like me look good.. About $1.45. bd.ft.
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