Flattening a long countertop

[Prashun Patel]

I'm making an 18"x110" countertop out of glued up cherry strips. The strips are each about 1.75" wide. Each 'panel' is actually made of several shorter lengths half-lapped together.

I've glued up the half-laps so I have 10 strips that are now 110" long. There is some bow in a few of the strips.

What is the easiest way to end up with a flat 18" wide panel from this point?

I have at my disposal: 8ft flat bench as a reference, #7 jointer, #5 jack, 6" power jointer, and 13" benchtop power planer.

I'm thinking to glue up the strips into 2x9" wide panels, then flattening the top by hand and then doing the 2 bottoms with the power planer. Then I'll glue the two panels and re-flatten both sides by hand.

Easier methods?

[David Weaver]

Given the thickness planer, I would do just what you've mentioned. You shouldn't have to do much flattening of the bottom side if the glue-up of the two sections is accurate.

try to test the boards (plane them with anything) before you laminate them together so that they are oriented to be hand planed in the same direction, or you'll be sanding and scraping when you find out some tear out in one direction and others in the opposite direction.

[Prashun Patel]

Thanks. How do you recognize the grain direction? I've always had probs with this. I get it right about 50% of the time...
;)

[David Weaver]

If you plane it and it doesn't tear out, then the direction is fine. Easiest way to check is just to use a smooth plane or your jointer plane or something and set it for a thick smoother type shaving (like 2 thousandths). No matter how good you are at reading grain, if you have to do 15 or 20 of them you're going to read one wrong - so a check with the plane is the best way. It'll take some time, but it'll keep you from getting stuck planing directly across the thing when you're done with glue-up, and a good smooth plane job with no tearout will make finishing easier.

[Prashun Patel]

That's how I usually do it; just thought there was a way to do it apriori. The prob is that the strips have already been glued up 'bowling alley style' end-to-end already without consideration given to grain direction. Whoops...

I do have a high angle blade on my jack/smoother, so I'll just have to work slow in the problem areas, I guess....

[lowell holmes]

I don't see the need to neander this task. I would take it to a professional shop and ask if they would run it through their wide belt sander. I would do the joinery by neander methods. The first real piece of furniture I made was a blanket chest for my daughter. I had the lid on it sanded to flatten it. IIRC the fee was $20.

I know, I speak heresy.

[Prashun Patel]

Thanks, Lowell. I've been toying with that very idea. I think I might just bite the bullet and have the local mill do it. $30, no tearout, no tears... I'll probably be there and back by the time it'd take me to do it myself.

[John Coloccia]

The pressure rollers on a wide belt can flatten bowed wood. It may work but as a warning it may well just make it thinner without ever getting the bow out. At a minimum I think you're going to want to get one side roughly flat before you toss it on the wide belt (which is a dandy idea, by the way).

[David Weaver]

I have also paid to run off stuff to go through a large oscillating double drum sander, but in this case, the pieces are large and it may not take any longer to finish them off by hand than it would to figure out how to haul them. It just depends on what you want to do, and who could fault someone for running them to a mill if you don't like the planing that much.

Prashun - if you do decide still to do these by hand, you can work directly across the grain or at a diagonal with the plane on the skew if needed and still not have it be too much trouble. It's not quite as convenient as orienting all of the boards to plane downgrain, but it's not impossible, either.

What's the finish on these going to be?

[Prashun Patel]

I think I'll do some initial flattening of the bottom by hand. Gotta test out the new LVLAJack! (Stealth gloat).
It's 1.5" thick; I'm happy if it ends up around 1.25".

I'm going to finish it with Waterlox. I'm thinking about 'priming' with some garnet shellac to help the color along and to speed the build on the Wlox...

[Prashun Patel]

Thought I'd post these. For a hobbyist like myself, handling, gluing, flattening something 10'x2' was an issue.

This 'bar' top is 2" wide cherry edge glued, bowling-alley-style. I first glued up 10' long strips. Each end joint is a oak-pegged half-lap cut on the tablesaw. Did that mostly for decoration. Then I glued the strips together individually. This took longer than doing it at once, but allowed me to keep each joint close to flush.

I took the top to Willard Bros to drum sand. $60 for them to do all the dirty work while I browsed their showroom = the best $60 I've spent this year. (Before taking it in, I flattened the bottom a little with my #7).

I cross cut it to length with a router and spiral bit. The underside is beveled at about 60 degrees. I did that by routing a 45 deg chamfer, scribing a line on the underside, then handplaning it. That was rewarding work.

For the finishing, I sanded to 220. I wanted it a little darker than cherry normally starts, but was concerned about blotching. Even dye blotched the test pieces when I wiped it on. Flexner's book suggests spraying it thin with in DNA. I tried that (Transtint Honey Amber + a dash of Medium Brown) and it was awesome. I've never sprayed dye b4. So much control; no lap marks, no blotch. I'm converted.

Then I followed with a wipe down of BLO, and a few coats of garnet shellac. I really like applying shellac from a squeeze bottle. I just lay down a 12" line of shellac, swipe it 2-3 times with a shop towel, and it leaves a streakfree finish.

I'm in the middle of Waterloxing (wiping on very thin coats) right now. This stuff is great, but goes hard in the bottle very quickly.

The trained eye will catch one or two slight gaps in the glue lines, but my wife and I are happy with it.

One big lesson learned was that I did not pay attention to grain direction during glue up. This resulted in tear-out challenges when jointing and initial flattening. Next time i'll pay better attention.

[Paul Incognito]

I just did something similar. I glued up a 22" wide counter top from 8/4 white oak. I spent a few hours on Saturday flattening accross the grain with a #5, then trying to get it flat with a #7. In the end I decided it was more economical to run it back to the mill and have them run it thru their 32" planer.
Note that this is for a paying job, if I was doing this for myself, I probably would have spent more time working it by hand and just live with any imperfections (character:)).
PI

[Tom Vanzant]

I added 6" to the width of my workbench several years ago. I kept all of the new grain running the same, but ended up with the grain on the addition running opposite the grain of the original top. Ooops. Leveling by cross-planing went OK, but the diagonal and length-wise planing was tedious with a lot of smoothing passes of .001-.002" per pass. It all ended well with a smooth flat top, no sanding needed. Now if QS maple were just a better color-match to the original beech...

[Brett Bobo]

Beautiful job, that'll make for a great bar top! With the Waterlox, are you applying that inside since the ambient temperature in the shop is below 60 degrees? Also, how many wiping coats are you applying before leaving it to dry? Are you continuously applying the wiping coats, say two or three, before letting it dry overnight or are you letting each wiping coat "dry" for a short period before re-applying? Maybe these are questions for the finishing forum--ha!

[Matt Schuman]

That looks great! Love the pegs, great idea. I recently finished a kitchen island counter top, 3' wide, 9' long, 4/4 maple. I learned the hard way about grain orientation, as well. I quit working on flattening the top during the heat of the summer because my sweat would rust all my planes so quickly!

[Prashun Patel]

Thanks, guys!
Brett, yes, I'm applying it inside. I've got about 4 coats on it. But my coats are really thin; Just enough to barely moisten the top and do a decent amount of rubbing in (which actually rubs most of it off). I normally apply like this on smaller stuff, because it gives so much control in the build, and allows a patient noob like me to get a good finish. I put down a coat b4 work, one when I return, and one before I sleep. Done this way, you never have to sand.

It's a lot of work on something like this though.

I've had luck with Waterlox (talking about the original sealer here) brushing it on thick, wiping it on slick, wetsanding it in, and 'polishing' with it. It just seems to like being applied any way. Just keep in mind: the thicker you put it on, the less you should fuss with it once it's on.

[Pat Barry]

This turned out really nice. I can see your point about getting the grain direction matched. To do that do you need to do a test cut on each piece? Also, the pegged half lap joints are a great idea. I'm thinking about doing a hidden bridle joint for my project which is very similar to yours, but I may reconsider the pegging idea. Curious about what glue you used for the lamination, and whether you did the lamination in stages or all at once?

[Prashun Patel]

I used Titebond II.

I did the lamination one strip at a time. This allowed me to keep each strip flush to its neighbors. Takes longer, but is much easier.

[Johnny Kleso]

When I did my bench top I did two stacks of boards that I added one board at a time and then glued to two stacks together and made one..
This takes mamy more clamps but is easy to move around and keep the boards even on the faces since only have one board per stack to worry about moving.

[Stephen Pereira]

Nice work and a good post..lots of information to be gleaned. I like your idea of making long boards out of short pieces..always wondered how to do that.

Applying shellac with a squeeze bottle..I'll have to try that, sounds like a good idea.

[Prashun Patel]

Johnny- I actually did that too. I made a 13" slab and a 7" slab, thinking I'd run them thru my benchtop planer, and then join them. The issue I had was that the two slabs were hard to clamp together. I had to joint and rejoint by hand several times to get a gap-free (mostly ;)) joint.

The individual strips were flexible under clamping pressure, so as long as the faces were jointed smooth and square, the clamps were able to pull any tiny spring out of the each 2"x10' strip when it was added to the slab.

So, next time, I'll do it all strip-by-strip and skip the planer (which I skipped anyway!).

Working with shorter stock is of course SO MUCH more work than 'doing it right', but I was able to be extremely efficient in my use. I had ZERO waste.

[Prashun Patel]

Here's some pix of the counter installed. I'll do the corbels next week.

[Prashun Patel]

Here's the install with corbels. Pix not so great...

[Johnny Kleso]

Looks Great..