Pocket screws to pull them together. Only use lag screws
instead; it'll pull in very nicely.
Also saw the joints about a half degree off square in a
"valley" fashion so the top & bottom edge pulls together tighter
when you draw up the pockets. EAsyu to do that on a table saw
with that thickness wood. Glues better, too. Use a really good
glue; expensive but worth it.

Portable bench, eh? g

HTH,

Pop

"noonenparticular" wrote in message
et...
: Big in the sense of the boards (timbers?) involved.
:
: I'm trying to edge join the two boards for my bench top. Each
board is 80"
: x 3 1/2" x 7". They're big and I need to join the 3 1/2"
edges.
:
: Here's what I've done.
: - Got the faces flat and square by using long 4" wide strips of
plywood
: screwed to the sides to form a sled. Ran it through the planer
to flatten a
: face, then removed the strips, flipped the board and flattened
the opposite
: face.
: - planed one rough edge down to mostly flat (so the bit
wouldn't have to
: take a big bite in the next step) then laid the board on its
face, screwed
: one of the straightedges to the face (actually the bottom face
so the screw
: holes will never show) then used a pattern cutting bit (bearing
on the top)
: to true half the thickness of the edge.
: - Removed the strip, flipped the board and changed to a bearing
on the tip
: bit in the router and rode that bearing against the edge
created in the
: previous step.
: - I did this to each of the two boards thinking that I would
get a nice
: mating surface. What resulted was not bad, but not the
tightness that I was
: expecting. Would like to get these tighter and some solutions
(like adding
: clamp pressure to draw the boards together during glue up)
simply won't work
: given the size of the boards.
:
: Any ideas?
:
: By the way, I'm going to use a full length 3/4" plywood spling
during glue
: up. Also, the gap on the edge at it's max is about 1/32,
although most
: spots are less or touch flush.
:
: tia,
:
: jc
:
: