Which tool would you use to rip and square?

[Ruhi Arslan]

I am in the process of building a bench. I've almost completed the trestle legs already. After failing to get the pieces for the top jointed properly, I was on hold to find a better way before wasting expensive material. The top will be laminated/jointed maple. Both bottom and top layers are 7/4 thick bringing the total thickness to 3 1/2" when laminated. I have asked for help earlier with the jointing problem I had and realized that the pieces are too heavy to properly joint with the jointer I have (JJP-12) since I think I cannot give good support throught the length and it is practically impossible to level infeed/outfeed support rollers to be "perfectly" level with the jointer table. Therefore, I've built a sled and jointed one face using the planer. It worked perfect. Then, I planed the opposite faces without the sled bringing them down to 7/4 flat and both faces parallel. The variation on thickness is less than 0.001" side to side and end to end.
Having provided the background, here is my question(s); what method should I use to joint the edges? Considering the length and the weight, I may end up messing it up again. I'm inclining to use the FS 75 with a long rail to rip the one edge and use the table saw to rip the other edge or both with the Festool. I can built another sled to rip the rough edge on the table saw too but it would not be my first choice. They are about 90" plus long.
Next question: Do you see anything wrong with the way I arranged them? I tried to combine them not to overlap the joints in between the two layers. Also, I tried to alternate the direction of growth rings. I am also going to use 1x1/2" splines in between the pieces in each layer.

[Chris Fournier]

Your JP is just fine for this work! If you are finding that the lumber is too unwieldy then I would recommend that you coerce a friend into helping you joint an edge before passing the other edge under the planer or by the TS blade.

[glenn bradley]

Roller stands or other forms of support. I process many pieces of material that are larger than the beds on a given tool. If you took the cutter out of the equation, your material should pass through the path of the cut without you having to hold it up. One exception in my shop might be starting material through the tablesaw. Supports at infeed and outfeed are not only convenient, they yield better results and add safety. You should never have to muscle your material at the beginning or end of a cut. JMHO.

[Bill White]

Why not just rip the pcs. to 2 1/2" to 3" wide and then face glue them instead of edge glue? Won't you have some wood movement across the width?
Bill

[Ruhi Arslan]

I am not a "Yankee" by no means but my thought was to economize the lumber I had to get most out of it. By the time I cleaned both sides of the 8/4s, I ended up having 7/4 thick pieces. If I were to rip them, I'll have 3" wide 12 pieces which gives me 21" wide, 3" thick face glued slab. It is still possible to do so at this point, i.e., not too late since I have not ripped them. In terms of appearance, I thought it would look very nice to have the 7-8" wide pieces on the top. Unless there is a "must not" reason I would like to do it this way since I thought alternating the grain and not overlapping the joints would create stable enough structure.

[Jeff Duncan]

I think it will stay flatter and more stable by gluing up pieces face to face. If you cut your strips to 2" +/- and glue them up that way it should be very stable as it's now a rift/ quarter sawn top. However it's your bench so if you like the look of it flat sawn then it may well be worth it for you to do it that way. I personally would have saved myself a lot of aggravation and bought 8/4 stock to start with instead of all the extra gluing.
How are you planning on gluing the top up? That's going to be difficult to get good evenly distributed pressure without a vacuum press or some other help? just curious? Face gluing would be easier there too!

good luck,
JeffD

[Carl Civitella]

Hi, my thoughts, why not just double the edges to make it look thicker then bread board the ends. A lot of lumber being wasted and the weight would be lighter. Carl

[Dave MacArthur]

Ruhi,
Here is a thread on bench-building where the decision to laminate the top-boards on edge vs. edge-joining them flat (like your layout) is discussed. In short, don't edge join, but I think this is a good read for you:
Large boards for a bench top? (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?153448-Large-boards-for-a-bench-top)


http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?153448-Large-boards-for-a-bench-top&p=1570703#post1570703

[Michael Peet]

How are you planning on gluing the top up? That's going to be difficult to get good evenly distributed pressure without a vacuum press or some other help? just curious? Face gluing would be easier there too!

This is an excellent point. Also, face gluing them allows you to build subsections that you can run through your planer before final glue-up.

One other note - if you plan to flatten the top by hand I suggest aligning the pieces so the "easy to plane" direction is the same on all of them when you glue them. It will help reduce tearout.

Best of luck!

Mike

Mike

[Ruhi Arslan]

Thanks for the quick responses and heads up. It was no brainer to change course and head into the new direction. That was some write up Dave. Thank you for taking your time. I did some math and turns out I could still get what I needed if I were to face glue them after ripping to 3 1/2" widths. I used my new Festool saw. For the amount of material it was removing, 1" dust port and the hose doesn't do a good job but otherwise it cut pretty nice straight faces. I would not consider them "glue ready" but pretty darn close. It is perfectly square. I also noticed that it "chatters" somehow when I move a bit too fast. It sounds like something is wrong it but I understand that it is normal as it adjust the torque to maintain constant speed. Correct me if I am wrong.

Here is what I have so far... I am going to rip them to size on the table saw and edge joint them on the router table since I have the Incra Wonder Fence and proper straight bit for it. I am going to reserve the jointer for the shorter/lighter pieces from now on.

[David Gandy]

Face gluing will do much to prevent expansion across the top and will yield a beautiful bench which is exactly how I constructed mine:
http://i881.photobucket.com/albums/ac14/rodeking2/100_0733.jpg