I have 2 choices on hand for my bench top...

[Grant Aldridge]

I currently have more of a countertop in my shop 14ft of butcher block against a wall with cabinets above) which is great for lots of things but not for joinery. I will be building a suitable hand tool bench soon, roughly 5x2ft and it will live in the middle of the shop. I have acquired 2 big wooden screws - one for a leg vise and the other for a wagon, unless I decide on something different. I am planning for it to be a split top, that seems most useful to me. This will be about a 32" high bench, I have a moxon bench on bench for dovetails etc.
Now I have a couple pieces of 8/4 maple (not sure what species, got it along with a bunch of 4/4 wormy maple but the 8/4 is very dense!). They're 12-1/2" wide and 6&5ft long so I could flatten them and call the top done! OR I have a pile of air died oak, believed to be red oak street running a piece through the planer.
We'll call it 4/4, after dressing it I'm more like 5/8, maybe I'll get a full 3/4 from it. I need to use it up anyways, it was gifted to me and I stacked it under the shelter. I could laminate strips of that and make the top thicker than my 8/4 maple (which will be thinner once flattened).
Thoughts?

Thanks guys
Grant

[brian zawatsky]

If you're going to take the time to build a bench, I'd recommend a top of no less than 3" thick for the sake of stiffness & vibration dampening. I worked for years on a maple bench with a 2" thick top and it was just too light. Recently I built a beefy bench with a 4" thick laminated top and a very stout base, and the extra weight and stiffness makes working on it very enjoyable.

[Grant Aldridge]

That's what I was leaning towards Brian, I'll save the maple for something else and get to gluing some oak