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