Building a workbench with some maple I got. The maple is in shorts. They fall between 3 and 5 inches across and are planed to an even 3/4ths thickness. Length is variable as well.
If I build a work bench top with this wood and use plywood as a substrate, should I be concerned with doing something on the underside? I know it's recommended that if you veneer a top, it's wise to do both top and bottom, but what about thicker wood?
Thanks,
MJ
The normal way to laminate a workbench with your material would be to rip the wood to equal widths, then face-glue it so that the top looks like 3/4" wide strips.
Alternately, you could glue up 4 thicknesses of stock. This would let you use the full width of the material and thus waste less. This technique is discussed in the most recent FWW tools and shops issue.
Whatever you do, don't glue large surfaces of solid wood to plywood. They move at different rates when humidity changes, and thus will warp.
Chris
You've got 3/4" thick maple, varying lengths, widths from 3" to 5", right? Why in the world do you want to put them on plywood??
Rip all to 2 1/2" wide (or whatever thickness you want the bench top) ang glue them face to face. If some are too short for your benchtop, it doesn't matter...just butt two or more pieces to get the needed length; be sure to have the butts on one strake offset from any on adjacent ones though.
A quick thanks to all who responded so far.
I wasn't thinking about standing the shorts on their side, but that makes some sense. With the larger boards, I might get two pieces out of them. Just want about a 6 ft bench top, so that would work with the material I have.
My approach was towards a "bowling alley" approach. A friend of mine had built several benches with maple alley material salvaged from a defunct lane. I was going in that direction.
MJ
A fiend did this for a table top. The ends split some but other than that it worked. The threaded rod doesn't do anything after the glue sets, though. It's sorta like an integrated bar clamp.
plus, if you buried the end of the rod/nut under the last edge board, you'd be unable to fix the top like you did if it did split. that's a good argument against using allthread.
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