I took on another project that I suspect will take me a fair amount of time to complete, but figured I'd document my journey once again for your amusement!

I previously reloaded periodically by clamping a 2x4 to my work bench in the garage, and screwing each one of my presses into the 2x4. But I really hated having to stash stuff everywhere and having it be covered by sawdust every time I wanted to do anything. When Covid hit, I saw an opportunity to get more reloading in by taking a height adjustable table from the office and sticking it in a corner of my basement next to my work desk.



It has worked so well for me that I reload all the time now, and want to expand a little and have something a little more stable and with enough real estate to leave a few more machines in place. It gets crowded pretty quick, and shakes a bit when I have the roll sizer or deprimer going with the case feeder, which doesn't do me any favors with my temperamental case feeder.


So I went to Home Depot and gave them a bunch of money for some very, very wet Doug Fir construction material.


Doug Fir is a softwood. It dings and mars fairly easily when new, but dries fairly hard. Otherwise, the only thing it has going for it is that it is cheap compared to the alternatives. I spent a while combing through the stacks at Home Depot and picking boards that appeared reasonably straight and did not contain the pith, or core of the tree in them. But I couldn't do anything about them being so wet. The normal moisture reading for wood that has acclimated to my shop is somewhere below 5% on my meter. Most of these new boards clocked close to 10%. The 4x6 clocked in over 16%. It felt damp to the touch. All of them are also bleeding resin like crazy. They stick to the surface of everything they touch.


The 1x12s were at least dry enough to form a reasonably stable top. I started out by marking out the most usable lengths of each one, to get an 8' length, and then chopping them up.


They were just barely within the cut capacity of my Kapex.


Next, I ripped them into thirds. I could have bought 2x4s to do this, but the longer joist boards were drier, straighter, and had somewhat better grain to them. The 2x stock didn't have a single board without significant warp in the stack. I feel sorry for the guys framing houses these days.





Give you an idea of what I am up to.