Fiberboard for Lastmaking
researching laminate materials
George Koleff’s Last Designing & Making Manual recommends making lasts from laminated blocks. He recommends a material called “custom board”:
Custom board 18mm [between 11/16 and 3/4 inch] thick is a very good material for beginners to start with. It is similar to chip board but better quality and is very easy to work with. Please do not use chip board as it is not suitable.
I haven’t been able to find information on “custom board” online, even limiting my searches to Australian sources near Koleff’s home of Adelaide. An illustration showing how to cut out profile boards from a sheet indicates grain direction. That suggests a wood product in its natural state. But George’s mention of similarity to chipboard leads me to believe custom board was probably a denser kind of fiberboard.
As in leather, so in wood: terminology is kind of a mess. Best I can tell:
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“Chipboard” is “particle board” is low-density fiberboard.
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Suppliers and makers call medium-density fiberboard “MDF”. MDF mixes wood fibers with resin binders.
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“Hardboard” is high-density fiberboard. Hardboard can be made of just wood fibers, relying on the natural lignin to bind them together under pressure, rather than added resin.
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“Masonite” is “pressboard” is a kind of hardboard with rough and smooth sides, made by a “wet” steam process.
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Hardboard is also made with two smooth sides by a “dry” process.
For a sense of pricing, Home Depot’s website:
I haven’t found ¾″-thick HDF readily available. Stacking ⅛″ profiles to ¾″ will take six sheets, or about $90 for HDF versus $53 for MDF. So I’m looking at MDF.
MDF is very easy to find, but from experience I know that it won’t rasp or plane smoothly. I will likely need some kind of epoxy or poly coating like PC-7 or Bondo to finish. Something without water, to avoid soaking in and distorting the surfaces. On the other hand, coating all around could seal the fiberboard from moisture, so it keeps its shape as the weather changes.