I have been assigned a project

[Robert Cox]

My experience consists of a couple of cutting boards and TRYING to make segmented bowl sections.

My tools are a palm sander, a Skil Saw, drills, a Ryobi Table Saw with a Freud blade, and 4 sleds. 2 are experiments I built and 2 were gifts from Mike who did the cutting board tutorial. (BTW, they are really NICE sleds!) a 90 degree and a 45 degree.

The task is from my wife. She got new office furniture and it lacks a modesty panel. Medium oak is the base finish. The panel hole is 28" x 48".

I was thinking just go to Lowes and get a 2x4 sheet of oak. Trim that. Then add a perimeter of Maple(?) for a contrasting look.

TO join the Maple and oak I was thinking saw cut grooves and use biscuits.

Do I stand a chance at success.

Should I just buy oak boards and glue them up?

Any ideas to make it look decent?

[Chris Padilla]

Robert,

If you want, you can just skip the biscuits as I don't see that you own a biscuit cutter.

You could cut the slots for the biscuits on the table saw but it will require mulitple passes to get the groove to 5/32" (I think that is the size of groove required for biscuits). For this method though, you would just use splines and not biscuits.

Or just skip the whole mess and just glue the maple to the plywood edge and carefully plane or sand down any misalignments. I edge-band this way all the time with no problems.

Or, as you said, go solid hardwood...movement shouldn't be an issue.

[Michael Ballent]

My vote would be plywood with edgebanding... Unless you are looking for an excuse to buy some tools ;)

[Robert Cox]

Well, I could use a band/disc sander to help with my bowl segments....

Eventually, I want a lathe. But I don't nkow how to work that into this.

[Robert Cox]

Also, I assume I would make the spliines on the TS?

[Michael Ballent]

1/4" hardboard ripped a little narrower than the combined depth of both grooves... Depending on the size of the panel you can cut the grooves on the TS, but I would use the router in a table with a 1/4" slotting bit. It's a little more safe in my opinion :D