Using wood flooring for a bar top?

[James Brothers]

I am in the process of building a wet bar and am planning to use teak for the bar top.The teak that I will be using was originally hard wood flooring. The plan was to plane it all down attach it to ¾ in. plywood and then to sand it to one flat fishable surface.
My question is what would be the best way to keep the joints tight over time. I guess what I had planed to do was to use wood glue on all the tongue and grove joints. Then possibly glue the teak to the plywood and also screw it on from the backside. If you have ever done any thing like this or can think of a better way to do it then this pleas let me know, thanks.

[Hal Flynt]

I think I would glue the tongue and groove and clamp. You are in reality jointing those boards. You may need to read up on successful glueing of teak since it's oily by nature. Acetone to clean and plastic resin glue come to mind.

I don't think I would glue it to the Plywood due to seasonal movement. You should be able to glue one edge and then use screws and elongated slots to fasten to the rest of the ply to allow for change in width over the season.

[Joe Branch]

I made a torsion box with 2x lumber and 1/2" OSB. I nailed the "pretty" boards to the top and and also nailed the scraps to the bottom. This help balanced the the top, of the workbench but makes it heavy. I use BLO on the top surface. The bottom is unfinished. It has been 2 years and the seems have not expanded nor contracted.

[brian gallagher]

hi,

I used oak T/G flooring on the kitchen counter in my loft that I built. the wood was dumpster dived/ used but never finished/ I guess in an attic.
Attached it to 3/4 ply with lots of screws, the wood had character (read bowed to heck) so I had to persuade it with prying and screws.
I didn't bother to plane it since I didn't have any tools to do so.
It also had a cool aged oxidized oak look that I liked over the red new oak flooring look. I filled the many cracks with wood putty that I stained with acrylic paint (brown and black) and then tung oiled the whole thing a bunch and it got very dark.

two years later.. It has moved a bit, a couple of the cracks opened up say a 32nd to a 16th and I notice them in the winter but only visible if you put your nose down on them. works for me.

Seems like your best chance for minimizing movement cracks is to not have to fill the cracks and get your T and G to fit tight which is likely if your wood wasn't 100 years old in a dumpster in Bed-Stuy.

Also I have gleaned from the creek the idea that you can stack up flooring on edge and make a nice hefty 2 1/2 inch workbench surface. So I am still keeping my eyes out on the dumpsters for flooring!

brian

[James Brothers]

A lot of good ideas now I just have to choose how I will do mine. Thank you every one for your replies, I’ll let you know how it turns out.