Homebase for wood?, nope!, go to a timber yard. Or find someone blond-and-bubbly to go for you - most timber yards will cut an amount of wood to size for free.
Homebase, however, does sell metal desk legs, so it's still worth a trip there to get an idea.
If the design isn't right to make it solid with four legs then five will not help.
Make sure:
1 the top doesn't flex
2 the legs are secure
3 the legs are the same length
1 If the top does flex then you can add (screw) 'battens' to the underside to thicken the wood along a strip (eg around the edge). Effectively you are making the top much thicker even if only along a narrow strip. NB for this to work the 'batten' must be screwed/glued along its length and not just at the ends.
2 If the legs are attached to the top in just a small area then the fixing is likely to fail. Use proprietory fittings - eg a metal housing into which you can screw the legs and which spread the area of the attachment. I've recently attached some legs to a table top (for a computer desk!) and the legs (from IKEA) screwed into a metal base about 15cm in diameter which attached to the top with 5 screws. If you don't want to take this easy way out then you can use the 'battens' in 1 as support/housing for your legs.
3 If the legs are all the same length then you rely on the floor being flat. The only way to get a chair/table from wobbling on a non-flat floor is to use
As in all such things you can learn by looking. Find tables that work well - in general go for old 'real wood' examples - and see how they are made. Note that, in general, metal fixings are modern alternatives for woodworking techniques that take too long or need skills that have been rejected as too costly. It makes sense to copy many older hand-made techniques as modern (esp flat-pack) designs require very accurate cutting.
I'll have to have to find out where our timber yard is.
Any type of wood that is better to go for? I want a chunky table (so i can screw in quite long screws) - quite hard but not expensive - all the furtnitre in my room is medium dark type wood...
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