Building a workbench with some maple I got. The maple is
in shorts. They fall between 3 and 5 inches across and
are planed to an even 3/4ths thickness. Length is variable as
well.

If I build a work bench top with this wood and use
plywood as a substrate, should I be concerned with
doing something on the underside? I know it's recommended
that if you veneer a top, it's wise to do both top and bottom, but
what about thicker wood?

Thanks,

MJ

I'm not sure exactly what construction method you are proposing. If
you are making like a butcher block arrangement with the shorts glued
face-to-face with the 3/4" standing up you "might" be OK. However, I
still think the expansion factor will destroy any overlayment with non-
expanding plywood. If you are doing edge-to-edge glue up of the shorts
then for sure the expansion will kill any attachment to a ply overlay.
Maybe I am not following.

On Mar 17, 10:27*am, "
wrote:
Building a workbench with some maple I got. The maple is
in shorts. They fall between 3 and 5 inches across and
are planed to an even 3/4ths thickness. Length is variable as
well.

If I build a work bench top with this wood and use
plywood as a substrate, should I be concerned with
doing something on the underside? I know it's recommended
that if you veneer a top, it's wise to do both top and bottom, but
what about thicker wood?

Thanks,

MJ

On 03/17/2010 11:27 AM, wrote:
Building a workbench with some maple I got. The maple is
in shorts. They fall between 3 and 5 inches across and
are planed to an even 3/4ths thickness. Length is variable as
well.

If I build a work bench top with this wood and use
plywood as a substrate, should I be concerned with
doing something on the underside?

The normal way to laminate a workbench with your material would be to
rip the wood to equal widths, then face-glue it so that the top looks
like 3/4" wide strips.

Alternately, you could glue up 4 thicknesses of stock. This would let
you use the full width of the material and thus waste less. This
technique is discussed in the most recent FWW tools and shops issue.

Whatever you do, don't glue large surfaces of solid wood to plywood.
They move at different rates when humidity changes, and thus will warp.

Chris

A quick thanks to all who responded so far.

I wasn't thinking about standing the shorts on their side, but
that makes some sense. With the larger boards, I might get
two pieces out of them. Just want about a 6 ft bench top, so
that would work with the material I have.

My approach was towards a "bowling alley" approach. A friend
of mine had built several benches with maple alley material salvaged
from a defunct lane. I was going in that direction.

MJ

On Mar 18, 1:31*am, (Pinstripe Sniper) wrote:
I've got a question. *Let's say for sake of discussion this glued
together work bench top is ~3" thick. * How about getting a really
long drill bit and drilling say a 5/16" or 3/8" hole across the width
of the bench top - perhaps at the middle of the thickness or maybe a
bit lower/toward the bottom? *(Kind of like rebar in a concrete slab)

Then you'd put threaded rod *though the holes and terminate the ends
with washers and nuts and put the wood slightly in compression.

Would this make for a stronger/stiffer top or would differential
expansion/contraction cause problems? *How about if the entire bench
top slab - all surfaces were saturated with say, urethane, including
the threaded rod passages.

Just wondering - I've had the notion of trying this but theory has not
yet met reality.

A fiend did this for a table top. The ends split some but other than
that it worked. The threaded rod doesn't do anything after the glue
sets, though. It's sorta like an integrated bar clamp.

On 03/18/2010 12:31 AM, Pinstripe Sniper wrote:
I've got a question. Let's say for sake of discussion this glued
together work bench top is ~3" thick. How about getting a really
long drill bit and drilling say a 5/16" or 3/8" hole across the width
of the bench top - perhaps at the middle of the thickness or maybe a
bit lower/toward the bottom? (Kind of like rebar in a concrete slab)

Then you'd put threaded rod though the holes and terminate the ends
with washers and nuts and put the wood slightly in compression.

Would this make for a stronger/stiffer top or would differential
expansion/contraction cause problems?

The purpose of rebar in a concrete slab is to work around the fact that
concrete is very weak in tension.

If you build a trestle end and lay the slab of wood on top, running
threaded rod through the bench will buy you very little. The one place
where it makes sense is in a shoulder vice where you have a lot of
tensile force essentially pulling the benchtop apart and so the threaded
rod resists that force.

Chris

SonomaProducts.com wrote:
I don't think you need a cross link type rod but others do.

There are people who advocate this and even insist on it. I have glued
and clamped maybe 50 butcher block type tops, not the end grain
version but edge grain, so lots of maple sticks stood on edge and
face-
to-face glued. I have made them from 1/2" to 4" thick using a variaty
of 4/4, - 8/8 thick boards in sizes ranging from 2' square to 5' x 7'
monsters. I never have run a rod across the pieces. I have never had a
call back, although lots of folks could never find me. In all that
time I only know of one time I had a top start to split along one
joint at the end and the boards I used were really too squirrely to
use but I had to get it done so I just clamped the **** out of them. I
ripped the top along the bad joint, reglued it. It came out perfect
but I held the piece for a while just to be sure and ended up using it
in my kitchen to this day with no prob.

plus, if you buried the end of the rod/nut under the last edge board, you'd
be unable to fix the top like you did if it did split. that's a good
argument against using allthread.