Non-warping Wood for Base?

Unfortunately it's quite a large piece of timber to keep straight, particularly in our centrally heated houses.
Veneered MDF/Chipboard, with a solid wood edging springs to mind.
Our new (to us) home, built 1995 has an office space with a permanent desk, a bit like a kitchen work surface, but made of high quality/density 40mm pre-veneered chipboard.
It's edged with a solid hardwood moulding, which if it was sat 45mm would form a nice edging to locate your plastic cover.

The other possibility, and I don't know if anyone offers the service commercially, would be to use the wood of your choice, and have it stabilised with something like Cactus Juice.
It's applied in a vacuum chamber and drawn into the wood as the air is re-introduced.
The final item is then oven baked, but obviously could not be done in a domestic oven.
https://houseofresin.co.uk/cactus-juice-stabilizing-resin-3-79-litres-1-us-gallon-revised-formula/

Bill

Hi Doc,

It seems to me looking at your previous models that you have used wood but in comparison they are much shorter. I can certainly appreciate your desire not to have a base that will eventually twist.

You could try using block board - a lamination of two layers of ply separated by strips of timber glued together. Not cheap but you may get an offcut. I have some that is 1" thick that I used for a baseboard to build a large ship model many years back (due to circumstance at the time it was never finished) It's very dense and extremely warp resistant.

I used a left over piece to make the base for this case and cut the timber to surround it. The timber was recycled from an old mahogany mantel shelf

The surface is the ply - not further veneered and coated with french polish ie it is not 'french polished' in the traditional sense

Its absolutely flat and is now several years old and sits on the sideboard in a centrally heated environment - no warps yet

Maybe more food for thought ?

Ramon

Edited By Ramon Wilson on 06/02/2022 22:54:34