I just completed my glue up on a 10’ dining room table top (6/4 hickory) after dry fitting everything first. The problem is I had to put clamps together when clamping them on. By doing so, at the joint is flat but when I clamped it, it raised up the breadboard on both ends about a 1/8”. I tried putting pocket screws in the base to draw it down and it may have drawn it down about 1/32. In my limited experience I can think of 2 options:
1) break out my Router Jig and plane it down.
2) which is less preferred cut off the ends and rejoint them.
i will also add that these were jointed with 10mm dominos.
Replies
These things tend to nag me even if the piece is four states away. This pathology has led me to pursue a solid repair as opposed to a quick-fix when these things happen. My knee-jerk response is to use a guide and a circular saw to cut off the breadboards, re-joint the mating surfaces, re-domino and re-assemble.
There should only be glue at the center so if you have the means, a plunge cut in that area should free the breadboard. Either way the mating surfaces will be re-jointed so just sawing them off may be more straight forward.
It sounds to me like you've just domino'd the ends to the tabletop. If that is the case, the joint will eventually fail. Take the opportunity to cut it apart and make proper breadboard ends. The breadboard ends have several functions that are not served by gluing a board to the end of your table.
If you are a member start here:
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2020/02/05/breadboard-ends-4-ways
If you are not a member this is a good place to start:
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2005/09/12/all-about-breadboard-ends
Thank you both for your input.
MJ, yes I did. I have never put breadboards on before....however from my research prior to this project; I know typically one should only glue 1/3 of a breadboard. However, the customer had asked for a couple things that took me down this route I am getting ready to tell you and my reasoning, whether it’s wrong or right. 1) they did not want to worry about water rings. 2) they wanted to put hot plates on the table without having to worry about the fogging affect that is caused by this. So I decided that I would put a 1/8” epoxy flood coat with a epoxy that would withstand 500 degrees. So my thought process was....if I am going to encase the table top in epoxy, the wood should not expand and contract since I do not believe the epoxy would allow this action. I am interested to hear your thoughts on this.
Regardless, I am going to cutting the breadboards off later today. The more I thought about Geedubbs post, I already knew that was the right approach. I was hoping or wondering if anyone would have mentioned maybe tacking a track saw and plunging a relief cut To draw it down, it doesn’t like that a viable option.
If you do saw them off then re-joint them, one way to avoid clamps pulling up the breadboards the clamps are pressing on is to have equal numbers of clamps across both the top and the underside of the table top.
Longer clamps can bow, which is probably what pulled those breadboards up a bit. Having equal numbers of clamps across top and underside prevents this pulling-up as the bowing forces cancel each other out via the combined compression forces across the top and bottom of the tabletop.
Dominoes can work with breadboard ends but not that well and are best used only with items much smaller than large dining tables. Only the centre doms are glued in; the outliers are glued in to only the top whilst the other half goes unglued (and perhaps waxed) into elongated slots in the breadboards, allowing differential movement at each side of the top with the centre line of top and breadboards staying put.
The doms then keep the top and breadboards co-planar; but there isn't as good a support of the breadboard by the tabletop as there is with a tongue & groove or a spline joint. That's OK in small items but what if a weighty fellow leans heavily on the breadboard end when getting up from his feast at that dining table! He might be a domino-snapper, the rascal.
Incidentally, a sprung joint (slight concavity of the breadboard edge butting up to the tabletop) can help keep the whole join tight-closed, even though the outlying parts of the joint are not gued so they can move against each other.
Lataxe
Thank you all for your comments. I knew cutting off and re-jointing was the thing to do.....I was hoping there was a quick trick as I have 80 hours in this table and benches and I’m ready to move on. Ha
MJ is right on me glueing the whole breadboard and not just 1/3. There was some thought as to why I did this though, whether it was right or wrong. The person I’m building it for didn’t want a standard finish like monocoat or something like that. They had asked for me to do a table top epoxy so they wouldn’t have to worry about glass rings and could put hot plates directly on there top. So my thought was the epoxy should keep the wood from expanding and contracting and if I glued the whole top it would be a stronger joint. This is the first time I have ever worked with hickory and I read it splintered and was a difficult wood to work with. So I tried limiting running too much across my table saw some it didn’t care for straightening the boards after being on the jointer.
Today is the day I will be cutting these off after I get some coffee third’s morning.
So South, any updates on this? How did it go?
A thought: unless your client's sold on breadboard ends, do you think battens wil work?
Mikaol
"I have 80 hours in this table and benches and I’m ready to move on."
Painful as it is this is just the reason to go just a bit further and be happy with it.
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