Ben Gold says...

I'd like to eventually put an 8 foot long (approx) 2-3 foot wide wooden
counter in my home. It will likely be supported by thin cabinets, floor
to ceiling posts at each end (already supporting the ceiling), and
probably a couple legs.

I'd like for one side of it to be like a bar in that you can sit at it
and have your legs go under it (i.e. it hangs over whatever it is
resting on).

€ What is the best source for such a thing? how hard would it be to
build myself?

€ Anyone know of any resources in New York City? Brooklyn specifically.

€ And lastly, what kind of wood do you prefer for butcher blocks?

thanks,

Ben

Judging from your other posts, it appears you want an edge grain counter
not a butcher block. That's good because a butcher block or a counter
made of wide pieces of that size would be very difficult to make. With
the edge grain, you would rip the panels to the thickness you want, then
flip them on edge for gluing. This would make things much easier in
several ways. You could choose whatever thickness you want, and any
differing original thicknesses of individual boards could be ignored.
Last but not least, since the individual laminates are long, thin and
flexible, they won't fight you much when you glue them up. This is
critical, because few, if any, boards are really flat over 8'. The old
adage 'flat as a board' wasn't coined by anyone who had ever worked with
wood. Since you need 8', it would be nearly impossible to joint and
plane them flat and square without industrial sized equipment, and even
if you could, you would lose too much material with most boards. Still,
choose your stock carefully, and while a little bow will be tolerable,
don't buy anything with twist.

Difficulty of the glue-up will be high. You will need an 8' section of
flat uncarpeted floor a couple feet wider than your counter and at least
8 strong clamps, but in practice you will probably need several more.
3/4" pipe clamps would be the way to go with cauls to spread out the
clamping force. They run about $18 for clamp and pipe together around
here. They may be considerably more in NYC. Use a slow setting glue
like Titebond Extend and work like an asteroid is about to hit the
earth. You may as well take the safe route and only glue up a portion
at a time and spread the assembly time over an entire day. Remove
squeeze out from one side before it dries and save yourself a lot of
work. You will need to include extra length of stock to cut the ends
square when you are done and you will need to sand and plane it flat.
Hope you have a good quality jack plane and basic sharpening skills and
a decent orbital sander.