We have an oak staircase at home. It was built by amateurs (the whole house was) and is extremely creaky. The treads are simply 1-inch planks of oak (from the 1980s) that were screwed in with very little subtetly into the underlying stringer.
About 15 years ago, we got a specialist to come in. He looked at the staircase and said that it would need to be redone (of course). For some reason he never sent us a quote, so we’re still stuck with the Creaky Stairs.
One aspect he had mentioned during his visit is that our treads were warped, and that normally an oak tread is not one solid piece of wood, but a collage of multiple pieces, glued together tightly and arranged so the wood grain meshes together. He said the collage was meant to counterbalance each plank’s natural tendency to warp over time, so that on average the tread will remain flat. After he said this, I noticed in other people’s houses that their treads were, indeed, quasi-invisible collages.
But I’m watching DIY videos on YouTube, and I don’t see anybody doing that. They just use a solid plank. How important is the collage?
I assume by collage you mean a laminated tread? It’s getting harder and harder to get large diameter wood stock, so most treads that are +/- 12" will be made up of 2 or more pieces of wood glued up. That being said, I wouldn’t hesitate to install a one piece tread of dried oak stock. Warping usually happens as wood dries, and glueing and screwing the treads down goes a long way.
Totally agree. It’s the supporting structure that matters. And solid wood costs much more than laminate. Your old treads may have been made from plain sawn wood off center boards which would cost less but be more prone to warping.
My basement steps (built 1930s) are 1.5" thick wood, 36" wide, nailed down to the open stringer with 2 nails on each end, not the slightest bit of warp.
There is little resemblance between the oak harvested in 1930 and the oak harvested almost 100 years (!) later in 2023. Same species perhaps, but very different material properties.
Engineered wood could refer to composites made just from solid wood, but they usually involve materials like plywood and OSB (oriented strand board) glued together in more complex shapes like I-beams which may be further combined into trusses and the like. Solid wood may be part of the composite structure also like the joists in part of my house made from 2"X3" pine flanges top and bottom and 1/2"X12" OSB web in between. Remarkably light and strong, they span 20 ft. supported only at the ends and cost just a fraction of solid or laminated wood joists.
Thanks. Like I said, my woodworking days are essentially nil since high school shop in the 70s. But I was thinking about the chessboard I made by gluing strips of different colored wood together, then cross-cutting and reversing every other strip. I guess I performed 2 different laminations. Just never thought of that term other than WRT plywood-type layers.
Now I have to look for an opportunity to comment on a laminated butcher’s block or something!
It’s just a descriptive term. In threads about WWII PT boats someone usually mentions that they were made out of plywood and then I’m duty bound to point out that they aren’t made from plywood sheet stock, plywood in this case means the boat hull is constructed by bending and gluing together solid wood planks up to an inch thick and oriented in different directions.
Further coloring my narrow perception is that I play upright bass, and one of my basses is of the type interchangeably described as laminated or plywood. Just the most common context in which I encounter the terms.
(Making up numbers) The tread, which is maybe 1.5 inch thick, 10 inches deep and 3 feet wide, is made up of multiple pieces that are all 1.5 inch thick and 3.5 inches deep, and some arbitrary width. The 3 rows of pieces are glued together tightly, side by side and end to end, with some matching of wood grain that makes the joints almost invisible, and then sanded, trimmed, routed, and varnished together to make up the tread.
Seriously? You buy stair treads made that way. Computer Aided machines are used to cut and sort the pieces of wood from the original lumber, smooth and square them, then feed them into machines which construct long boards that are trimmed, edged, and then cut to length. I think you’ll find treads made like that in the past laminated longer pieces of wood of more regular size because the cutting and sorting was done manually. The machines now maximize the yield from any piece of wood.
