Posted by David Sherman on Sunday, December 03, 2006 at 8:41PM :
In Reply to: You'd be happier with oak. Cheaper there? posted by chriscase on Sunday, December 03, 2006 at 7:56PM :
There's a world of difference between "white oak" and "red oak". All I've ever seen in the lumber yards in the West is red oak. It's great for furniture and cabinets but it rots fast. White oak is what all the stake sides on the M-series trucks were made of before they went to fiberglass. It has a similar grain to red oak, but is lighter and smells completely different when sawed. It's as rod-resitant as redwood. I've actually salvaged a fair amount of white oak out of pallets and crates, so the "utility" grades must be really cheap back east. When I was in Delaware once a guy was building a fence out of it. Of course he had to drill all the nail holes. I asked him why he didn't just use cedar and he said cedar was way too expensive. Out here it's the other way around, but for a truck bed I think I'd spring for the good stuff. Top quality old-growth fir should be pretty good though. Lots of schooners were built of fir, keel, ribs, planking, deck, and spars, in the Puget Sound shipyards in the olden days and a lot of them they lasted a good 50 years before they rotted.