Panel glue uo advice...

[Michael Dunn]

Hey guys!

When gluing boards to make a panel is it better to use more narrow boards as opposed to using fewer wider boards?

Here's my situation... I have (poplar) boards in the rough that are say 5" wide on average. I need a width of 14". Should I use three boards that are about 5" wide? I know to alternate the orientation of the growth rings. In my head I'm thinking it'd be better and have a better chance of staying flat if I used 5 boards that had been jointed and ripped to 3". Drum sand, then glue it up, rip and crosscut to final dims.

Any thoughts?

[Mike Henderson]

I've never had any real problems with panels cupping so I always go for bigger boards just to minimize the number of glue lines.

I'm making some assumptions here: That the panel will be a show panel and not a substrate for veneer, nor will it be painted. If the panel won't show, I use narrow boards, just to get rid of the narrow boards. I certainly wouldn't cut boards down to make them smaller for the glue up, unless they were cupped.

Mike

[joseph dake]

I typically won't go for anything more than 6 inches no matter how wide the panel be

[Rich Enders]

Michael,

I believe that "to alternate or not to alternate" has been discussed at SMC many times. There are many people that disagree with "Norm" on the subject.

[Ed Aumiller]

Flat sawn lumber likes to cup if very wide, so cut it into narrow pieces
Quarter sawn seldom cups, so use it wide...

My $.02 worth

[Matt Meiser]

Whatever I have to work with. I've ripped wide boards and reglued just to take out cup without having to waste away too much at the jointer and planer. And my parents dining table has 11-3/4 leaves made from a single board.

[Pat Barry]

I would go for best appearance overall and fewer boards if possible. If its not a show piece then do whatever you want.

[Michael Dunn]

Michael, I believe that "to alternate or not to alternate" has been discussed at SMC many times. There are many people that disagree with "Norm" on the subject.

I've never heard Norm's thoughts on this issue. Which way does he prefer?

[Frank Drew]

For my tastes, fewer boards almost always make better looking panels, if appearance is your aim; in an ideal world, panels such as door panels would be single boards (if you could find nice looking boards that wide.) For another example, I would never, ever glue up to make a drawer front; back to my version of the ideal world... all the drawer fronts in a piece would be single boards from the same tree.

I also disagree with the advice to alternate end rings when laying out flat sawn boards for panels; in my experience, both looks and ultimate flatness (over time) is enhanced by arranging the growth rings all in the same direction.

[John Lanciani]

I would go for best appearance overall and fewer boards if possible. If its not a show piece then do whatever you want.

+1. A two board panel with the seam in the middle always looks better to my eye. Glued up narrow strips screams cheap factory work to me. My SOP for panels is to start with 6/4 stock half the width of the panel and resaw it. Open the leaves and glue them up. I do this up to about a 24" panel. If I need wider I use four pieces and do a double book match. There are so many easy ways to keep a panel flat that I never compromise on appearance of the finished piece for convenience.

[Michael Dunn]

+1. A two board panel with the seam in the middle always looks better to my eye. Glued up narrow strips screams cheap factory work to me. My SOP for panels is to start with 6/4 stock half the width of the panel and resaw it. Open the leaves and glue them up. I do this up to about a 24" panel. If I need wider I use four pieces and do a double book match. There are so many easy ways to keep a panel flat that I never compromise on appearance of the finished piece for convenience.

How's abouts you share some of those easy ways to keep a panel flat?

[Matt Meiser]

+1. A two board panel with the seam in the middle always looks better to my eye. Glued up narrow strips screams cheap factory work to me.

Depends on whether time is put into grain matching. I'm not talking 2" wide strips, but with a little care you can glue 6" pieces up into a 24" top that you might not even notice the lines unless you look for them.

[Michael Dunn]

FWIW, this project will be stained with GF's Java gel stain.

[John Lanciani]

How's abouts you share some of those easy ways to keep a panel flat?

How's abouts you give us some more project info...

[Chris Fournier]

If the panel floats then up down up down with the grain I guess. If it is restrained as in table top I don't care. Personally I select for grain and the best overall look first and foremost. As for width of boards that is again dependent on the glue up and desired look as well as the available stock. Lumber selection at the very beginning of a project pays huge dividends down the road.

There are lots of resources when it comes to this sort of basic subject. Check out a used bookstore and grab any older Taunton publications.

[Michael Dunn]

How's abouts you give us some more project info...

Here's a rough drawing. The base will be panels glued up to give the desired width. The drawing doesn't show the joinery. I'll use either a rabbet or a locking rabbet. I even thought of mitering it to hide the end grain. I've made some panels recently from Poplar that ended up having about an 1/8" cup across 19-1/2". This was 1-1/2" stock. The base shown in this drawing will be 3/4".

[Jeff Duncan]

Any special reason why your trying to build a piece like that out of solid wood? Personally I wouldn't consider it unless it was a very special, (ie. expensive), one-of-a-kind piece of furniture. You need to really go through your entire design on a piece like that to account for all the different places where wood is going to move and make sure it's all moving the same way and/or have it designed to move independently. It looks like you have 2 wide drawers there, how are they going to be attached to the solid wood sides or bottom? Personally I'd reconsider the solid thing, but that's just one guys opinion;)

As far as stain grade panels go.....I glue up for appearance. If it takes 2 or 3 or 4 boards ideally I want them all about the same width. When you start alternating widths it's not the best look. What's more important to me is to orient the boards so that the grain of each works with it's neighbor when I glue up. It's not so much about how many boards you have in a glue-up as it is how well they work with each other. I don't worry as much about flipping the boards if the wood is properly dried and milled. That's not to say there's not merit in that practice, I just try to work around it whenever possible.

good luck,
JeffD

[John Lanciani]

No trying to derail you if I was building that and staining it dark it would be edge banded ply. None of the details are screaming out for solid wood (no complex joinery, no panel-in-frame, and by the fact that you're using poplar there is obviously no call for interesting grain features.) That notwithstanding, 14" wide poplar will stay plenty flat with glued and screwed butt joints. your biggest exposure is the drawer fronts, and I'd do them as applied fronts in one solid piece with the heart side of the board facing out. Slotted holes in the drawer box will allow the front to expand and contract while keeping it flat.

Edited to add; I'm a slow typist, Jeff beat me to it. :(

[Michael Dunn]

Any special reason why your trying to build a piece like that out of solid wood? Personally I wouldn't consider it unless it was a very special, (ie. expensive), one-of-a-kind piece of furniture. You need to really go through your entire design on a piece like that to account for all the different places where wood is going to move and make sure it's all moving the same way and/or have it designed to move independently. It looks like you have 2 wide drawers there, how are they going to be attached to the solid wood sides or bottom? Personally I'd reconsider the solid thing, but that's just one guys opinion;)

As far as stain grade panels go.....I glue up for appearance. If it takes 2 or 3 or 4 boards ideally I want them all about the same width. When you start alternating widths it's not the best look. What's more important to me is to orient the boards so that the grain of each works with it's neighbor when I glue up. It's not so much about how many boards you have in a glue-up as it is how well they work with each other. I don't worry as much about flipping the boards if the wood is properly dried and milled. That's not to say there's not merit in that practice, I just try to work around it whenever possible.

good luck,
JeffD

Initially, I planned to use plywood for the base cabinet carcass. For stability purposes. I don't want exposed plys so I would have to either veneer them, which I do not want to do, or miter them. I'd actually prefer to NOT do the panel glue up. Over the last few weeks I sort resigned myself to this option. I could reinforce the mitered sides with the smallest domino, right? I haven't used the domino like that yet. I can test on scrap to see how it goes.

Oh right, here's the main reason why I opted to do the panel glue from poplar. I was worried about a possible color mismatch between birch plywood and the poplar hardwood for the rest of the piece.

Again, I'm staining using GF's Java Gel Stain. Maybe it's dark enough to hide any mismatch in color or tone.

Any thoughts on that?

[Jeff Duncan]

Well this is all personal opinion so take it FWIW right..... I'm guessing this is on the lower end of the price spectrum since you want to use poplar correct? If so I would use ply or even mdf to fabricate the box and just veneer any ends you don't want to be seen.

There's a lot of possibilities with staining things to match if your comfortable with it. My take is usually pretty simple, it's cheaper for me to buy the wood I want to match, than spend a lot of time in the spray booth trying to match a different wood;) I use poplar for paint grade moldings and that's about it. Something that is going to be stained is made out of whatever hardwood needed to get the look.

So in short if I were building that cabinet I would most likely build it out of mdf or ply and band the edges in the corresponding wood. I would also make any hardwood parts out of the same wood, though preferably not birch as it's a PITA to get a nice stain on. If it was a slightly more expensive project then I would put the time in to do mitered construction. And if was a really $$$ project I would use solid hardwood of the clients choice with mitered construction. Again, just based on your using the cheapest hardwood available, I'm guessing it's not worth your time to do the miters? I'd also be cautious and test some samples before committing to match colors of different species. You can easily wipe out any small savings from using poplar by spending hours finishing:o

I have no experience with the finishing products your using so I'll leave that to someone else.

good luck,
JeffD

[Michael Dunn]

Well this is all personal opinion so take it FWIW right..... I'm guessing this is on the lower end of the price spectrum since you want to use poplar correct? If so I would use ply or even mdf to fabricate the box and just veneer any ends you don't want to be seen. There's a lot of possibilities with staining things to match if your comfortable with it. My take is usually pretty simple, it's cheaper for me to buy the wood I want to match, than spend a lot of time in the spray booth trying to match a different wood;) I use poplar for paint grade moldings and that's about it. Something that is going to be stained is made out of whatever hardwood needed to get the look. So in short if I were building that cabinet I would most likely build it out of mdf or ply and band the edges in the corresponding wood. I would also make any hardwood parts out of the same wood, though preferably not birch as it's a PITA to get a nice stain on. If it was a slightly more expensive project then I would put the time in to do mitered construction. And if was a really $$$ project I would use solid hardwood of the clients choice with mitered construction. Again, just based on your using the cheapest hardwood available, I'm guessing it's not worth your time to do the miters? I'd also be cautious and test some samples before committing to match colors of different species. You can easily wipe out any small savings from using poplar by spending hours finishing:o I have no experience with the finishing products your using so I'll leave that to someone else. good luck, JeffD

I did a test box with some scrap plywood. I mothered the corners and reinforced with. 4mm dominos. It came out perfect. However, then I realized that I'd then have to either edge band the front to hide the plys or build a face frame of some sort. Frankly, I didn't want to do either. So I ended up gluing up some panels for the base cabinet.

As for the price range of this project I would say its low-mid to mid range. I'll PM you the price just to keep it out of search engines and such.

[Rich Enders]

Michael,

As I recall, Norm was a fan of alternating the direction of the growth rings. And as you can tell from the replies above, there are lots of opinions on the subject. Us "Fine" woodworkers always seem to get riled up by Norm.

[David Hawkins]

Furniture industry standard is that no board should be over 4"wide in a panel. Wider boards tend to amplify problems like warping and cupping. It can also relate to getting a better yield when cutting a large amount of wood. If you have 5" to 6" average board width then you can end up with a large amount of narrows (less than an inch) that look like crap in your panels if you cut widths over 4". For just a few panels it probably doesn't make too much difference

Dave

[Mel Fulks]

I've seen those standards ,and the makers of Titebond have some stuff in print saying boards should not be more than 3 inches wide. There is plenty of old stuff around glued up out of wide boards that were only air dried. There is a difference between what a new hobbiest should attempt and what someone skilled can accomplish. And hollow jointing helps ,but so much easier to follow low standards.

[David Hawkins]

I agree completely with the easier part. I remember a cherry display cabinet my grandparents had, wide boards, air dried cherry and every time the barometer dropped or rose you would hear creaks and groans (at least before I developed wood worker's hearing.... wish now we had ear plugs back then....)

One of the real issues with the 4" max standard is that in general you get a wider range of grain patterns in the panel and since each type of grain swells and shrinks at different rates a mix of grain patterns helps to average our the movement of the wood so that each panel in a unit will come and go together as humidity levels change. Take a panel made of flat grained pcs. on one end of a case and a panel made with vertical pcs. on the other end and you will have problems. Tangential (flat grained) movement in general is about double that of radial (vertical grain) in most woods. Given an 18" panel width the panel with the flat grain could easily be (+/-) 3/32" to (+/-) 3/16" different than the vertical grained end depending on species and other variables.

Another issue in regard to the "factory" standard is that most furniture companies consider 2 Common and Better lumber to be of furniture grade. They can do this as they know they are going to need a full range of sizes and they need to use all the wood to make a profit. The home shop generally buys wood at retail and so they have to get a higher yield out of the lumber they buy. This means they buy better grades of lumber and can get wider boards to use in their projects. Trying to get even 4" boards out of 2 Common stock can be a challenge for even the computerized scanners the factories are using these days. Which is why they insist on the "and Better" part of the "2 Common and Better Grade"