Face jointing boards for benchtop

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I'm hoping sometime sooner rather than later to make myself of proper bench. Given my living circumstances, it will most likely be small, but anything is better than the half-broken workmate I've been using since moving. (My "bench" in the old apartment was my tiny part of a three-story porch structure on the back of our building. Small, and you had to be careful not to knock anything off the edge, but with a little jury rigging and reversible additions to make a proper work surface, there was no way my bench could scoot away during vigorous planing!)

Anyway, looking at various options and waiting for the right deal to come up, I realized one of the local lumberyards frequently has specials on a pallet load of some hardwood stock. Sometimes it's a better deal than others, but often it's quite good. It'll be walnut, ash, cherry, birch, maple, something like that. It's generally thinner than I'd like to deal with for laminating, but the price breaks make the extra laminations seem worth it. (Time and labor are cheaper than actual money right now) Given that I'm probably only looking at a 5 foot bench, (if that - I need to carve out space in the back room before I start) I think I may be able to make this stock work if I swing by frequently and keep tabs on what's on sale.

I haven't had too many problems with wood movement with stock from this place. I have bought from these sale pallets for other projects before.

I usually buy rough lumber, but the stuff in these pallets of sale stuff is all jointed, surface plane and sanded on the wide belt sander; usually prepped three sides, sometimes four. It's usually done well enough that I wouldn't always bother surfacing the inside of drawers made of this stuff; but I wouldn't use it for a show face without grabbing the smooth plane.

So my question (sorry, I'm rambling) is that I don't think I've ever had a reason to face joint something like you would for a benchtop or a counter. Am I probably okay gluing up individual boards as is from the mill, if the clamps seem to pull everything tight in a dry run?

Would you smooth plane these surfaces before joining? (I think they're sanded to 150?)

Worry about mild tearout in a board if it's not something liable to show at the surface of the finished benchtop?

The plan was to glue up boards either singly or a couple at a time into sub assemblies, and then join those up to the finished width. I was thinking that rather than continually adding one more board as I have more 6 and 12 inch clamps than larger ones, so I could in theory get this done somewhat quicker. Once I'm dealing with larger segments, I'd be using the jointer plane and treating these as if they were large edge jointing jobs like gluing up a panel, but I'm curious how perfect I need to make things when face jointing single boards.

I'd assume I would need to address any severe twist or cup, but the plan is to buy extra and try and avoid using those boards. But from reading some of Schwarz's books, I'm lead to believe a little bow along the length of the board is apt to be okay if the clamps can easily pull it into shape. Obviously I'd avoid something that was starting to look like a good candidate for being a bent chair back.

Sorry, this was long and rambling. Anyone have some thoughts? I think I'm overthinking. I need to look around at other lumber places before I start buying, I heard there was place not to far from me that had some large slab stock for cheap, but I don't know how dry it is. But this place is close and I've always been happy with the stock I've gotten from there, even if I'm not getting the best price, so it's where a lot of my stuff comes from.

[Prashun Patel]

You really have to examine this joint to joint.
What's the thickness of each piece? The thinner, the easier it'll be to pull it true.

You want to avoid stock that is not uniform thickness. That can cause a void that can't be pulled true.

Also, my advice is to glue up the assembly from the center and to keep adding boards to that - unless your plan is to run smaller assemblies thru a planer or drum sander. If you are going to handsmooth the entire surface, then it's easier to pull each board true to a big slab, then to pull two slabs together.

In the end, though, there is so much gluing surface area, even if there are a few voids, besides aesthetically, it probably won't make a bit of difference.

As for the ripples from planing or jointing or scratches, those marks should be smoothed out prior to gluing. Howevr, the pieces don't need to be sanded prior to glue up. In fact, I read somewhere that a planed surface is actually better for glue up than a sanded surface. Don't quote me on that.

I'm making a 5ft bench myself right now out of maple. Post pix when you're done. Would love to see!

[Jim Koepke]

One thing you may want to do is to plane the surface that will be the top. Then mark it to show the direction of planing. If all the top pieces are lined up with the same planing direction it will be easier to smooth the surface when you are done.

jtk

[Prashun Patel]

Ah yes, Jim is right on with that!
When you line up your boards, run a block plane in both directions to determine the direction of the grain. I made a countertop not taking heed of this. On my bench top, I've taken the extra 20 seconds to do this.

[Dave Anderson NH]

Hi Joshua, When I built my new bench about 2-3 years ago this was my proceedure. After ripping, jointing, and planing the rough stock to size I did my glueups as subassemblies. Since I was using 8/4 stock which finished at about 1.75" in thickness I decided to work in threes. Depending on your stock thickness you might go 4 or 5. I worked from 2 sawhorses and made sure all of my clamps were ready before starting the gluing process. To make life simpler, I bought a gallon of the Titebond Extend which gave me a longer open time. I poured glue on one face of a board and spread it with one of those sample credit cards you get in the junkmail. I repeated the glue spreading on the third board and then placed them together. It pays enormous dividends to take as much care as possible to carefully align the top and bottom edges so that after the glue dries at least one of the faces has all 3 boards flat and parallel. This saves a huge amount of planing later.

I did one 3 piece glueup per session until and the last 2 were 4 piece glueups since I wanted a 24" wide bench. After all of the sub assemblies were done they were again jointed and I made 2 sub assemblies 12" wide still taking care on the alignment. Again they were jointed before gluing the 2 sections of 12" together. Working in sub assemblies makes the work far more manageable since you are dealing with large, heavy, and awkward slabs. Being somewhat anal, I rough flattened my new benchtop and let it sit another 3 months to fully aclimatized before I did the final planing to get a perfectly smooth and planar top. Even then, I waited a couple of weeks before applying the finish.

[Erik France]

I did mine in a very similar process as Dave. I used a bottle with a roller to apply the glue though and Tightbond III. I intended on doing it in thirds, but I discovered in a dry run that it was taking too long to get the glue on and clamped. I only did three, maybe four pieces at once for the initial glueup. Any more and I would have exceeded the glue's open time. I was also able to employ my shorter clamps and have enough clamps to do two subsections per session. I didn't worry too much about having the ends perfectly aligned, but aligning during glueup as Dave mentioned saved a lot of later effort. I used a few short cauls to help with alignment.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

One thing you may want to do is to plane the surface that will be the top. Then mark it to show the direction of planing. If all the top pieces are lined up with the same planing direction it will be easier to smooth the surface when you are done.

jtk

Good point. Something I was definitely planing on doing.

[Michael Peet]

Hi Joshua,

When I did mine, I dry fitted the boards with the clamps in place before gluing. If there were any voids I could not close with light clamping pressure, I fixed them first.

One thing to keep in mind - if you do sub-assemblies, it will become harder to clamp out gaps as the assemblies will become more rigid. That's how I built mine though.

Also, +1 on the Titebond Extend.

Mike