Laminated oak tablesaw extension table

[Rick Akl]

When does science meet woodworking? A couple of years ago I was driving by my old high school and I saw that they were throwing away the old lab benches. The legs and stretchers were solid oak so I felt it prudent to rescue them from their landfill future.

Fast forward to the present. I picked up a jointer and planer this year so I set out this last week to square up all the wood that I found. I have enough for an extension table for my PM2000. I was thinking that I would run the laminations parallel to the blade so that the expansion of the wood does not press out against the rails but instead out the right side of the rails.

Any thoughts?

[Bruce Page]

Rick, that seems like a lot of extra work to me. A piece of laminated MDF or plywood with good support would work better.
To answer your question, I think you would want the end grain sandwiched against the rails as you suggest, but you would still have to deal with the lateral wood movement when attaching the table to the rails.

[Steve Bracken]

What Bruce said.

There is another good reason for a Formica type top, which would hide the oak, and that is that it's a fairly hard and low friction surface.

I might be tempted to use the oak just for the subframe and extension table legs.

[Rick Akl]

I'll be doing it to use as an additional workbench with dog holes and an end vise. The lateral expansion will be allowed for by using two long endcaps with sliding dovetails for the center laminations.

[Rick Akl]

Given the lack of responses is this just not feasable? I thought powermatic released some tablesaws with this setup? Any last comments before I throw in the towel on this one?