Pine project; have build questions

[ephmynus]

Okay, I normally work with exotic woods but a buddy approached me recently to build him something out of pine. I'm not over buying some 2X6s but I'm a little confused about the build method and I'm not sure how much I need to worry about wood movement with pine. For the front, I'm sure mortise and tenon will do just fine and that's the plan. However, for connecting sides and fronts, I'm used to having definitive sides with glued face frames. So, where the rails on the side connect to the front 2X6, how do you think I should attach? Is this something I should be considering using glue and pocket holes for? Should I consider mortise and tenon into the face of board? The same goes for the angled boards on the end. If I glue and screw, will I have a problem with wood movement? Finally, the top looks like pine with breadboard ends. Should I tongue and groove boards together or should I just edge glue them? I'm not used to cheap building so I'm not sure the best way to go about this. Thanks for the help.

[JGrout]

Well IME the first thing to know is that using pine is not cheap building if you use furniture grade pine instead of Borg lumber which is how I would proceed

typical mortise and tenon joinery would be my go to here and I would use the same techniques as one would for hardwood joinery

JMO

Joe

[ianab]

Pine actually moves less with moisture changes than most hardwoods. Means you can "get away" with a bit more cross grain construction than you otherwise might.

Now with that item the only things I see that would be a concern is the top, and the 2 shelves. The width wise movement of those.

The top is easy enough, you use some sort of floating connections to hold that down, like any regular table top.

The shelves I would glue up as a solid piece, just with butt joints, same as the top. Then mount them in a similar way, on some smaller rails, running front to back between the legs. Then just allow a small expansion gap front and back, between the shelf and the legs.

The X pieces on the ends aren't going to alter in length, and neither are the legs or top apron. So you can M&T or screw them into place as you prefer, and make them structural braces that will really strengthen the whole thing up.

I work with softwood a lot, mostly Cypress and Port Orford cedar, and a design like that will work fine on those woods. The heavier construction makes up for the wood being a bit weaker.

[rwe2156]

Keep in mind a lot of construction lumber is high moisture content needs plenty of time for acclimation/drying. Wood movement is more dependent on MC than soft vs hard IMO. I've seen pine move and crack just like hardwood.

I would use MT joinery or the front and side apron with floating tenons for the angled braces and shelves. I would not use pocket screws.

As a side note the table is very bulky looking and overbuilt. I would discuss what the table is used for and possibly redesigning some features suggested below with your friend before proceeding.

Suggestions: 1 X lumber would be adequate. The angled end braces are unnecessary, as is the middle vertical support. IMO eliminating these would improve the overall look.

[YSU65]

Along with the other answers, pine is rather soft. You have to be careful leaving any chips under the 'good' side and banging on the back side. Dings will appear. Just have to be careful. ... Tom

[jteneyck]

The shelves have breadboard ends on them, too, just like the top. The traditional way of dealing with them is to cut a tenon on the end of the top and a stopped mortise in the breadboard end. The tenon has a short stub tenon almost the full width and 3 long tenons. They fit into corresponding mortises in the end. You glue the center tenon into its mortise, ONLY. You pin the tenons with a dowel, etc., the outer two of which have over sized slots in them to allow for expansion/contraction. Put the dowels in from underneath if you want to hide them, or put them in from the top for a decorative effect. The dowels typically only go part way into the opposite face of the mortise, but if you put them in from the top there's no reason you couldn't have them flush with the bottom face.

If you are lazy you can just nail on the breadboard ends. I've seen a lot of old pine furniture made that way and many of them were still attached after decades. A little better method that's less work than what's described above would be to mill a stub M&T and then screw the breadboard end to the top through slotted holes and then plug the pilot holes. The center screw could actually be a dowel, glued in, and left exposed for a decorative effect.

John

[Phil S.]

I built these tables as props for a show with construction grade lumber-



Tongue and groove the full width of the bread board ends with 3 tenons extending into the end piece. The tenons were pinned with a dowel, the middle one fixed and the outer 2 with a slotted hole in the tenon to allow movement. Over time, the tops shrank about 1/4" over a width of ~30" so the bread board ends stand ~1/8" proud on each side. I didn't measure the moisture content of these boards, but they were cool to the touch suggesting they were less than completely dry when I built the tables. If you can find quarter sawn pine, it tends to move less than flat sawn.

[John Mihich]

Pine can be really nice to work. Like others said - it is soft so be careful there. I glued panels in a r/s door years ago (30) - never cracked - pine is soft so it will expand instead of cracking - some times. I would go ahead and build like you would anything else. I don't do anything special.

Finishing is different though. Pine doesn't like to be stained with oil based stains. I use water based or dyes. practice helps. Sand with harder blocks. If you hand sand you could sand the softer parts more that the hard grains. If you are staining end grains then it is important to sand to the next higher grit on the end grains - this will help lessen the affects of over staining. Again - practice on scrap. Sanding equally is important before staining. Try pre-stain sealer.

[Brian Miller]

One of our local lumber yards sells Douglas Fir, which is what I used for my lathe stand and small workbench shown below. They sell 2 x 6 and 2 x 8 in 20' to 28' lengths, so in both projects I used 2 x 8's to crosscut an rip to sizes needed.

[Firebee]

Don't forget to look at 2 x 12s Often you can find much better quality wood