benchwork: birch or fir better then pine?

[rrinker]

 I guess it depends on where the ayout will be and what sort of treatment you will be doing to hide the  benchwork, if any. IE, if this is being built in the family portion of the house, where people will see it all the time - I'd consider using very nice quality wood and making it like fine furniture. If the layout is in the basement and you will put up skirting around it and never see the undersides, I'd just use reasonably good wood to get a solid and level structure.
 I also think a lot of people go overboard on the benchwork. The key requirements are that it is solid, level, and stable so someone bumping against the edge doesn't send a scale 12.0 earthquake across the layout. If your area is reasonably temperature and humidity (especially humidity) controlled, you should have no problems with warping and twisting once things are all fastened together, even using the 'inferior' pine from Home Depot. I love the ones who use girders so sturdy you could park a car on the layout, when it's a shelf-type layout and is narrow enough that you can easily reach everythign without so much as leaning on the layout surface. In certain cases you may need extra-strong support - for example, the raised floor section in a mushroom layout like Joe Fugate's - the floor has to withstand people standing and walking on it, and needs to be appropriately constructed, but for the general layout, imo all that extra structure is just a waste of wood, time, and money.

                                                 --Randy

[jbloch]

I'm hopefully within a month or two of starting my benchwork.  Have a couple of the MRR books that give guidelines on wood, some important points:

       (1) Use grade 2 or better (i.e. knots don't go through whole diameter of the lumber)
       (2) Some mild warping or cupping is OK, but avoit twisted pieces

My question is concerning type of wood.  Most threads don't say too much about it.  Seems like many have used pine, but I recall a thread a few months ago that indicated birch or fir are better choices.  Couldn't find that discussion on thread search today.

Anyway, any reccs?  Yes, I realize birch/fir would be harder to find and more expensive than pine (prob. have to get at a local lumber store rather than Lowe's or HD).

Jim