3- Suppplement you stock with more maple. I purchased "brown maple".
It's maple, but with some heartwood. Same stuff, not as pretty, half the
price.
I asked the exotic woods dealer, he said he's never tried to get it and never
heard of it, seems a shot futile.
It's not so much *that wood* as see what your local hardwood market has
cheap. It's a very regional thing. In particular I'm concerned about gluing
together maple and a softwood.
What I can get so far, Soboba woods:
Maple $6.85/bf
White ash $4.95/bf
Euro Beech $5.95/bf (extremely nice)
Hayward Lumber,
Maple 8/4 $4.87/bf (deal ay?)
6/4 $4.76/bf
Then it would all have to be butcher-blocked, end to end. I wouldn't know
how to arrange that unless I used an even-odd pattern like brick laying. That is
because of sizes of the pieces of wood in the table, I can't do an "all-like" gluing
pattern that will show weakness and be weaker like all the leaf pieces aligned up
in the middle.
I think splices are fine so long as the joints are staggered. Just make sure
that the pies in the same row are identical thickness.
What is a staggered joint?
As far as strong seasonal differences in my town, hardly anything. The
front door
gets a touch harder to close in rainy weather without any real water
touching it
besides that which is in the air. Which is probably your very strong point
of course...duh!
Chages in the weather *will* cause wood to move. You might as well just plan
for it.
I agree with that entirely now. Same woods to be used.
But the trestle will have to DF (previously, yes I had meant douglas fir, our
only local framing wood).
A softwood tressle is fine. I would, however upsize the height of the
crossmembers. They are your protection from racking (the sort of streess
that hand planing will put on a bench). The tendency of wood fibers to
compress (making the joint wiggly) would me mitigated by a tall crossmember.
(That is a 2x8 is a better design than a 4x4).
I was thinking of a 8x4 DF beam for a rear length-wise stretcher, using a blind
tennon/mortise into the leg, and then a fat healthy bench bolt going through the
tennon, the nut being a round cross dowel in circular hole, in the beam. 1/2" bolt,
head sunken in a counter bore. Then a 4x4 or 6x4 up front, same joint. With this
idea, there would be a single shelf resting on the 4x4 but going into a route in
the rear 8x4. 2x6 stretchers for the side ends.
But perhaps that's just my personal overkill.
Now you can see MY personal overkill...hehe
Looks like my Mother has made it clear that she wants to preserve the table and
get new legs for it... good grief! She cares that the table has been in the family
for 40 years. sorry for that waste of time.
So now back to the top again, for 8/4 stock, there is a length-wise joint that is
like T/G, but there is a routed groove on either side of the board (width dimention),
connecting boards with an inserted stave, is there a name for that joint?
Alex
|