Looking for suggestions on a wood-top project

[Andrew Wayland]

I appreciate all of your ideas here. I'm hoping you all may have a solution to my problem!

I'm building a wooden countertop that will continue along a wall to form a shelf. My original thought was to scribe a board to the wall, and then edge-glue boards to that in order to make the width of my counter.

Buuuutttt I screwed up with my long cherry board by getting a little over-zealous with scribing, so my project is on hold until I can buy a new board.... so before I drive the hour and a half to the lumber yard, I'm curious how you would tackle this?

The entire length is 11.5'. I want the shelf to be at least 6" wide and the counter portion is really only 24" deep, and about 28" wide: here's a very rough overhead sketch of what I'm building :

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If I can fine a 12' long cherry Plywood sheet, I may try and do it all in one piece, but I'm open to any suggestions!!!

[Jamie Buxton]

It would certainly be easier if you give up on the idea of making the whole thing as one monolithic piece. Heck, you've already planned on gluing up boards to make the counter area, so it isn't really monolithic anyhow. So make it from two subassemblies. One is the eight foot shelf, and the other is the counter. Scribe as required. There's little reason to connect the two subassemblies together, but if it bothers you, there are several kinds of hardware intended specifically to connect countertop parts together. Google with "countertop connector".

[Andrew Wayland]

The only reason for the monolithic approach is because I can't seem to think of a creative way to connect the two pieces together without looking plain.... or like an after thought. I think I'd feel better if I could make a creative joint between the two sections.

[Jerry Miner]

Glue it up as a single unit. Make a template out of something cheap and easy, like mdf or 1/4 ply. Scribe and fit the template, then transfer the cuts to the finished top.

[Jim Becker]

I'd do it as a single unit, too...although I would scribe the long board first before gluing up the assembly and finalizing sizing.