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On Dec 22, 10:00 am, "Leon" wrote:

Leon

I take it none of the plywood pieces are large enough to glue up flat
to make the top. Given that, I think you could laminate what is
essentially a 2"-3" slice of a very, very thick piece of plywood. It
should make a reasonable top, at minimal cost, mainly the cost of the
glue, of which you will probably use a lot. I can only think of two
drawbacks which are probably easily worked around.

I'm thinking buying a sheet or two for the sole purpose to rip in to 3 or so
inch wide strips. those turned on edge and the faces glued together. It
would be like a 360-400 on edge ply top when considering that 1/2" BB comes
in 9 ply to start with. Thicker pieces would actually save me some glue up
time and would use less glue.



1) Since plywood is generally made of veneers glued up perpendicular
to each other, half of the grain of your bench top will be end grain,
oriented vertically, and the other half will be side grain, oriented
horizontally. This means that your bench top may be a bit less stiff
than a solid word version. If you are concerned about the stiffness,
especially if you don't make the top thick, you should be sure to
incorporate some support in the leg structure under the top to stiffen
it up.


Right, but I am considering at least 3" thick so I don't think that the
possibility of sag would ever be a problem. And unlike regular plywood
Baltic Birch is all hardwood with no voids if you can get the real stuff.

2) The grain of the top will be half end grain, and half side grain.
You may be unsatisfied with the texture of the top with its varying
grain. You could work around this by applying some kind of uniform
thin top layer, such as a sheet of masonite, to be replaced when it
wears unacceptably.

Other than those two caveats, I say, "Go for it!" Recycling is the
way of the future, and we should try to appropriately use all of our
scraps instead of merely tossing or burning them. I just built a very
heavy bench out of some glulam beams from our neighborhood gas station
that were headed for the landfill (someone who can't read ran his too-
tall truck into the canopy). Now I have a really beefy bench and the
landfill has 600 pounds less wood in it, and it only cost me a bit of
glue and labor. My last bench was made of recycled 4x4's and oak
flooring. I used bolts I have gleaned from garage sales, keeping them
out of the landfill, and even made some barrel nuts for the stretchers
out of some scrap aluminum. I painted it with the tag ends of paint
that I am not allowed to put in the landfill, and that our county no
longer recycles. About the only way I can think of to have made the
bench "greener" might have been to use some kind of glue not made of
petroleum products, such as hide glue.

Good luck!

Thanks