Laminated Maple Bench Top - Face Joint or Not?

I'm about to finally get started on building my workbench. The top will be 2 1/2 or 3" thick, made by laminating (face to face) maple strips. I am milling the strips from 4/4 and 8/4 plain sawn hard maple. I was going to face joint each strip before thickness planing, but am wondering if it is a waste of time (and wood) doing it on every strip. Seems like just thickness planing would be enough for the interior strips (especially the 4/4), since the top will be laminated.

Now I'm thinking about face jointing just the 8/4 before thickness planing and only thickness planing the 4/4. Of course I would make sure the boards are pretty straight to begin with. I would also pick the adjacent boards so that they would not bow in the same direction. Seems like after everything is glued up, bowing in the interior boards should be eliminated.

Any thoughts?

-jj

Reply to
jjinatx
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Mine is 3" thick from 5/4 material. I face jointed first, but then only planed enough material off to mostly smooth the surface. (A few rough saw makes burried in the laminations would not make a difference)

Necessary? Idunno, but I sure would not want skip it and find out that I should not have taken the short cut later.

I glued up roughly 6" subassemblies and rejointed before the "big" assembly. This was to minimze the hand-planing effort after final assembly.

What I did not do, but wish I had, was to ensure that the grain was either flat or going in the same direction at the surface. I ended up with some nasty grain reversal in the surface. That resulted in a bit of tearout when hand-flattening with a plane.

If I were to do it again, I would laminate straight grain to the "top" edge of any swirly pieces and make sure all of the down-will grain was going the same way.

-Steve

Reply to
Stephen M

^^^^^^^^^^^

Above you will see some highighted words that are the crux of the situation.

"pretty straight" is NOT the same thing as "straight"

If you want a straight and flat bench top, start with straight and flat wood. If you're talking about a little bend, actually, I guess I wouldn't worry too much, but if there is any twist or cupping, that'll be an issue.

One thing to do is work in sections as wide as your jointer will handle for the first glue up. That is, if you have a 6" jointer, make 6" wide sections first, joint and plane those, then glue those together for your final width.

Mike

Reply to
The Davenport's

Why make a federal case out of a straight forward project?

A decent saw cut surface provides a good glue surface.

Positioning and clamping are going to require a relative long open time.

I use epoxy, not TiteBond, for this application.

Are you going to use threaded rods to position and hold strips?

Sure makes life a lot easier, at least it did for me. (Plug holes after final assembly.)

Once assembled, head for a drum sander and get the lamination surfaced.

The lamination is going to weigh 100-150 lbs based on size.

Translation:

A helper is a good idea for that trip to the drum sander.

Have fun.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

I'm not sure I fully followed your description. I have however lamed up maybe 100 items like this from cutting boards, grouped up 10 at a time to kitchen island tops 3' x 5'. This is the process I've developed.

After ripping all the material I make several groups of glue-ups to create 8" wide slabs. I do not joint the edges or the faces. As I start to dry fit the lam I see if any of the faces need jointing and joint only where I have bad nicks, warps, or low spots. If a board is warped along the whole length I just try clamping it to see if it pulls in flat, vs tryiing to plane it flat.

Then I take each 8" wide glue-up and flatten and thickness them to an equal thickness. I happen to have a wide belt sander and it is a dream for this. I have done it with a planer and a jointer but using hard maple for this always, makes for the big possibility of chip out. I've also belt sanded these flat.

Then I do a final glue up of the 8" slabs and do the same dry fit edge check to see if they need to be jointed or not.

BW

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