Following Lew's outline for making a workbench top, I plan to rip some
8-foot, 2 by 8s, with my BS (since I already own one and not a TS yet)
and glue them face-to-face, with the factory milled edge down.
First I'll glue in pairs, then create quads, etc.

Since I started thinking about this I learned about cauls--and using
them makes sense to me to help minimize the amount of planing that I
need to do. By the time I glue 16 or so of these boards together, the
accumulated "error" could possibly add up in an ugly way--if I don't get
those factory milled edges close to one another!

Hand-jointing the boards in pairs would make cauls work better when
gluing the boards in pairs, but not after than (unless the boards had
*exactly* the same width, an event which has probability 0).

Any thoughts that may help with my glue-up?

Thank you,
Bill