I’ve always wanted to make a table top (about 7 ft.) with many boards of various widths and lenghts. Nothing more then 6 inches wide and 24 inches long. Something like a butcher block style, but not even that organized. Layout is sure going to take some time, and I’ll probably use biscuits for joinery. Anyone else have any suggestions or experience with something like this? The table will be a prototype for a backwoods atmosphere restaurant.
thanks, Don.
Replies
Don,
You're project involves standard joinery techniques. Nothing special. Joint all the edges square. All boards in a particular line must be the same width. Apply pressure evenly all along the length of the table on glue-up. Apply cauls top and bottom to keep the piece flat during gluing and curing.
Biscuits do not add any strength to the joints. They only help with alignment, and in this project, they will be a big help. Cut them accurately. They won't help the boards align when dry-fitted. But when they swell with glue, they will fill the slots and bring the boards even.
Grain and growth ring direction always come up in discussions of such construction. If your design involves several boards in line in the length of the table, I wouldn't worry about it. Just select the best face up of each board. For the record, I advise having all the growth rings in the same direction, when paying attention to such things. Then the entire top cups in one direction, which can be handled with the center screw down through the battens.
Rich
Thanks for the response Rich. You've got it nailed in concept, but I was hoping to get away from boards in a lye the same width. You thinking that is not possible?
Don
Don,
I've never glued up a top using boards of unequal width along the length. But I don't see why you couldn't glue and clamp the width of the table represented by each new board (if I understand what you mean). It's not a good production technique.
In making up some butcher block tables, I was so obsessive about the "equal width thing" that I glued one row at a time and then ran the glued up table through the jointer, preparing each new glue line. This was because I could not be sure that all my boards were indeed equal width.
Eventually, as the table width grew, I had to joint the table edge using a router because I couldn't hold the table confidently flat and true against the jointer fence.
That was years ago, before carbide tipped table saw blades became so good and so cheap. Now a $40 Dewalt, thin kerf 60 tooth ATB blade from Home Depot will rip all your wood to exact width and leave a perfectly jointed edge all day long, without uttering a complaint. It'll also heat your coffee, cook your meals and darn your socks.
Rich
PS: I lied about the socks.
Kind of like random ashlar stone work? I think staggered ends would be a lot more work, but not difficult in principle.
With thoughtful choice of materials I think it could be very attractive. If you consider wood movement carefully, you could even use different species.
I have done what I think you are describing on smaller tables using band sawn veneers of different widths and lengths over a plywood or mdf core. They turned out very nice. But as I said these were smaller tables.
Rich, Dunc and Rouge,
I appreciate the thoughts and comments. It sounds like you all have a good grasp of what I'm think of. I orginially toyed with the idea of different woods, but plitting, cracking, checking, etc. scares me. Any thoughts or suggestions on minimizing adverse effects would be appreciated. My thoughts were to always run the grain in the same direction. And yes Rouge, the thought of an underlayment base has been on my mind also.
I thought I would first build a table out of plywood with hard stops on one short side and one long side and start building the tops out from there. Possibly even build some kind of cam clamp to keep pusing everything back into those to hard stopped sides.
Thoughts and ideas are welcome here.
thanks, Don
I built a bench seat using the technique that you want. Mine was smaller of course. Not only did I use boards of unequal length and width, but I also used three different thicknesses. One can see the thickness difference by looking at the ends. I used some surface butterflys and other joint locking devices on the surface. I'm not sure they were necessary, but they looked appropriate. The boards I used were carefully selected to appear randomly selected, if you get my drift. I encountered no problems with this entire lay-up, other than having to block the seat flat while planing & sanding. Oh yea....use biscuits or splines on the board ends where they butt into another for strength.....and use several intermediate cross aprons to support your table top.
I appreciate the sentiment on using biscuits in the board ends. I've never done it before. I've never seen or heard of it before either so it's not somthing I was confident about doing. The butterflies would be a nice touch, and I never thought about different thicknesses. I like the idea although it would prevent using the sander (I think). Thanks Jeff.
Don
You didn't mention thickness of the table at all.
I have a question for all of you that use a biscuit joiner and here goes:
If the tabletop is not thick enough won't there be a slight bump in the tabletop whereever two boards are joined together by biscuits. This would be due to the biscuits swelling up becuase of the moisture in the glue. Or does the thickness of the tabletop determine the size of the biscuit? I don't use biscuit joinery so I am curious as to problems that may occur.
Dave in Pa.
Hi Dave,
Thickness has yet to be determined. Now that I'm considering varying thicknesses I considering the whole design. Anyway, the top would be at least 3/4 and probably closer to 7/8ths. The boards I had envisioned using are rough sawn about 1 1/8". About the biscuits? I've never had any problem with swelling, and if I did it wasn't noticable while scraping or sanding. That's a good question though if different woods are used, but I doubt it will be a problem.
Don
Interesting question Dave. I've noticed rugby ball shaped dimples at the join line, right where the biscuits are in tops that are got at too quickly with sanding and polishing after assembly. My advice? If you use biscuits for alignment in a solid edge glue-up of a top, let the top settle and dry for about a week prior to final planing/scraping/sanding, etc., and polishing. The only logical conclusion is that the additional water introduced locally into the joint at the biscuit takes a little more time to get out than that at the plain edge to edge to part. Same applies to dowels, and loose tongues. Slainte, RJ. RJFurniture
I've never noticed any footballs (rugby or otherwise) in my glue-ups, but that could be from:
1. failing eyesight as I age
2. lack of interest in any sports and especially wanting to ignore football
3. the fact that I try not to get glue in the slots, using the biscuits simply as an alignment aid.....I'm not worried about the bit of glue surface (edge to edge) that I'm loosing.
On this table top, unless there get to be loads of butt joints, the strength loss is really negligible and I don't think you really have to worry about it.
Hi Jeff,
There will be a lot of butt joints. The table will be kind of a nightmare to make as Stan said. I'm thinking of using Stan's suggestion of keeping the widths in even intervals of a base like 1 or 1 1/2". Seems logical. I've got a busy weekend, but I'm thinking of laying a grid out in autocad, and then erasing vertical and horizontal lines en masse, randomly, and then counting what is left. Since this is a prototype, and if it sells, I'm thinking I don't want to puzzle every table top one by one. This is already out of my ususal world of woodworking and this could be a solution to some production work organization. I suppose to Clem, I'm one of those boobs that don't belong here. Which by the way, if anyone every feels I'm out of line with questions or advice, feel free to use the email option here to inform me of your thoughts. Your opinions will get much more consideration from me, and individually, my respect in return will be noted. I'd even appreciate the jesture. thanks
Don
Edited 8/30/2002 8:53:21 PM ET by Don C.
Thank you Sgian for the info on this.
Sgain,
Yes indeed. Not something I'll forget.
Don
A suitable analogy for what you are trying to accomplish exists with T&G strip flooring. In laying these floors, end matching produces a better result. End matching means that the board ends are tongue and grooved just as are the longitudinal edges.
Also there are cut stock operations here in Oregon that make Red alder table tops. These operations finger joint the board ends. Others make longer lengths of moulding by finger jointing P. pine.
Both flooring and table top finger joining require that the a given strip must be of uniform width for its entire length. I suppose you could create a more random pattern but for simplicity sake, I would keep the board widths as a function of some multiplier. Thus you could use 1" strips with 2", 3" or 4" widths. Personally I think that would be a nightmare to assemble and glue up.
Sgain,
I've never noticed any rugby footballs before, but I will bear it in mind. It makes sense.
Niemiec,
I think they will be a bit of a nightmare, but also that's the appeal of them. Something well made, but looks like its made from scraps and not out of desire, but neccesity. The atmoshere of the place I will try to put these into can best be described as being in the high rent district of Dogpatch.
Don
I once did a flooring job where the customer supplied short lengths (less than 12") of 2, 3, 4 and 5" maple. He wanted about 500 feet of this laid in a pattern similar to what you are describing. Just to make it interesting, it was a log house and the floor had to be scribed to the logs, but thats another story. After futzing and farting around trying to make it work, we settled on laying the floor in alternating same width strips. I would only take the job on time and materials and he decided it wasn't worth what it was going to cost after realizing how time consuming it was to develop that 'random' look.
That being said, you would be astonished at how inexpensive furniture from restaurant supply houses is. If you have the job locked in and don't have to compete against them, good on you. Enjoy the complexity of the layout and appreciate a customer who is willing to pay more than the rock bottom he needs to. If price is a consideration, you may need to rethink the approach.
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