Substitutes For Birch

OW! My thumb

Anyone use a sub for birch? Ive used maple before, and personally,I thought it was fine. And birch is getting hard to find in decent shape these days. My supplier said they were thinking about dropping birch all together.
They did give me a sample of European beech. I havent done anything with it yet, besides drive it all over town for 3 weeks, but I do want to see how easy it is to work with. It has birch characteristics and color.

gallerytungsten

I have some Euro Beech flooring; very nice wood. It's not super-hard, but still pretty strong. Easy to work with.

loneframer

I've done the birch/maple combo also, and it looked decent. The maple looked a little more consistent.

woodworkbykirk

interesting, a sub for birch, around here we usually use birch as a sub for cherry. every one wants cherry but cant afford it so they go with birch stained to look like cherry, be it cabinets or hardwood

oddly enough though, im about to lay 1000 sq ft of ash and we cant get treads in it off the shelf, so going with birch stairs

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putting down subfloor with glue and screws, well i saw dr. smith and the robot too , i had a martian burger and a sonic shake

loneframer

Did this "wine cellar", used birch for the toekick platform, but couldn't get birch beadboard. Had to use maple. Looking for finished pics to scan.

OW! My thumb

I did these cabs with birch & styles rails and maple raised panel. Id wouldve had to join 6 or 7 pieces of birch to make the width on the side panel ( couldnt find enough straight and wide).
She ended up wanting to glaze the cabinets anyway. Oh well.

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loneframer

A man is only as noble as the effort he puts forth.
Looks like a noble effort to me, nice job.

OW! My thumb

Thanks man.
This job was a bit of a pain because the designer girl had no concept of measurements and argued about things she had no idea about.
But the homeowner chick, having the biggest, firmest, roundest set of titties youve ever seen( and she was PROUD of'em) made up for it.

loneframer

Ahhhh, the joys of being a contractor.
When I first got into new const. I was doing punchlist on a penthouse suite. I overheard the ho chick talking on the phone about her needs
Next thing I know she's eating a banana flavored popsicle in fine fashion and offers to give me one. I panicked and said no thanks.

john5mt

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1st Gen tradesman
My summer job in college became my profession