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I am working on a house that is missing (thank you siding contractor) the wood pilasters that used to be on the 4 corners of the house. Trouble is that they were 20 ft long, 13 1/2 inch wide at top, 17 inch wide at bottom and 1 1/2 thick. Unless I am willing to wait for some trees to mature, the mill tells me I will not be able to use solid boards. I am considering building them by dowling 3/4 eastern white pine boards together over a CDX “frame.” Anyone have a better idea? Also, anyone have a good source near Boston for rift sawn or quarter sawn eastern white pine? Thanks in advance.
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Walt; Your idea of dowelling together 3/4' white pine sounds good except that all those dowel holes on that 20' run will have to match up. You might want to try routing 1/4" grooves on both edges and both ends of your white pine boards and splining the together with material cut from white pine waste, thicknessed to fit the grooves and cut so that the grain runs perpendicular to the joint (like biscuits)
Use a good type 2 glue or urethane glue. Glue a strip of 3/4" pine on edges and midline of back to
create a 11/2" thick profile. I have had good luck getting big pieces like your pilasters jointed and planes at local small cabinet shop when the scale
exceeded the capacity of my tools. good luck steve d.
*Steve:Thanks for the reply. It is helpful. Believe it or not, I've found a place that will mill 18 inch wide easter white pine planks for me, though the longest length that they have is 16 feet. They can even do it in verticle grain. It looks like I will have to do a horizontal butt joint instead of a long vertical joint. The stuff is pricey at 10.83 a bd ft but a lot cheeper than having pilasters built by a column company and will probably last longer. Any thoughts? Sound like the way to go?Regards,Walt
*Waltcongrats on finding a millworks shop to build your pilasters.your'e right. white pine is pricey. I still think building up the edges and center is a more economical alternative. have you considered spanish cedar?It's pricey too but probably no more than white pineand it is superior to anything else I have triedfor resistance to rot and stability. Looks like mahogany. Easy to work with. EXCEL urethane glueworks well. Good luck. Keep us posted. I'm curiousto know how it turns out. Steve