8/4 Red Oak quasi workbench top

Greetings everyone and thank you for welcoming me into your community. Let me start off by saying I have never worked/shaped/crafted a single piece of woodwork in my life. Looking over the various categories here I decided the Design Forum would be the best place to start. I have spent several hours reading the posts here getting ideas. Here is what I've come up with so far.

The background:
I am making a workbench for reloading. My number one priority is sturdiness. I was given some freshly sawed red oak to use for the top. I have 4 boards. Two are 7 inches wide by 72 inches long and two are 10 inches wide by 73 inches long. As the title states, these are 8/4 thick. My plan is to stain/finish them and join them to make a 30 inch by 70 inch worktop for my bench.

Currently they have a MC of 15%. The furniture in the room where they will reside is approximately 9%.

If I start now I know they will possibly cup and I may have some end splitting as they dry and draw. I will most likely let them drop another couple of percentage points to ~12%ish before I start finishing the boards.

My tentative finishing plan:
I am going to start out rough sanding the boards with possibly 80 grit or so. Once I give the boards a good going over then I plan on using Minwax wipe on stain and wet sanding with 100 or 120 grit to fill the grain. (Gunstock is the color I chose of course ;)) Once I get a good slurry and fill the grain I'll apply a final stain and then use a wipe on poly (sanding to a finer finish as I go) to finish the boards to give it a little bit of durability. Note I'm allowing each step the recommended drying time for that particular stage.

At this point I hope to have 4 fairly durable boards stained a nice Gunstock color.

Edge joining the boards:
I have read several topics about trying to join boards with too high a MC. I came up with a couple of wild ideas to possibly compensate for this. Since I don't have the means or the patience (mostly patience) to wait months for the MC to drop below 10, I decided to try a non glue approach to joining the boards. Ideas I'm bouncing around are dry doweling and even using the countertop style of draw bolting underneath to hold them 'mostly' together. I thought maybe with an adjustable join I could allow for drawing and 'tighten' as needed to keep any obvious cracks from appearing in my top joins. I know, the artisans out there are cringing after reading that last sentence lol.

Mostly I wanted to know if I had the stages for finishing in the right order: rough sand; wet sand with stain to fill the grain - this may take a few coats;(I chose Minwax wipe on stain. I would have chosen Watco danish oil here but am trying to combat the excessively long bleeding times) final stain and sand with much finer sand paper (also a few coats); wipe on poly, (minwax wipe on poly satin finish) fine sanding between coats - 3 to 5 coats to build up a durable top layer.

Once I have the boards in the condition I want then I'll join and secure to the workbench base.

Any and all constructive criticism is welcome.

Sincerely
JP

Personally I would either wait for it to dry or use something else. If your reloading goes anything like mine you're going to be exerting a ton of force on that top and if it isn't super sturdy you're not going to be able to get as repeatable results with seating depth and the like. Once dry and using good glue that Oak would be perfect. Take all of that with a grain of salt though I am only an amateur woodworker but an avid reloader currently also working on and oak and walnut workbench

Most folks fasten the boards together first, and finish the whole top after. If you finish the boards individually and then fasten them together, you're likely to get lippage between the boards -- that is, there will be a step in the surface between boards. Maybe it will be big lippage in one place, and smaller elsewhere, but it will be there -- I'm sure your sander-only surfacing process will not produce dead flat boards.

Cool Brandon. I'm both a novice woodworker and a novice reloader to be. My coworker keeps joking that eventually, as much as I read on my newly chosen hobby, reloading, that I'll be planting the trees to grow the wood to build the bench to reload the ammo to shoot. He says it might be nice to just go to the range eventually lol. I agree with him but honestly I'm having a blast doing things with my own hands. Based on all I've read and been told I will most likely continue with the bench using an alternative top and once the Oak is dried sufficiently, build the top I want and replace it on the bench. Luckily my construction technique will be modular enough to accept this change without too much headache. I'd be interested in pictures as you progress with your own reloading bench. Be sure to post them over in the appropriate forum and I'll keep an eye out.

Jamie I believe you're absolutely right. And as I'll be hand sanding everything the chance of lipping would be much higher. By letting the wood properly dry over time I can bypass a lot of the issues I'm trying to avoid with alternative (otherwise known as wildly non conventional) techniques.

If I'm in that much of a rush to make progress I will just put together a less appealing but overall much more stable interim top. I'll save the stain for the final product.

Thanks both for your replies. I greatly appreciate the advice.
Sincerely,
JP

Since my crazy ideas really weren't very good, and I've decided to wait for the wood to dry and then glue my edge joins... I'm wondering about doweling. I'm reading conflicting reports that 1) dowel joins actually detract from the project and add no joint strength whatsoever and don't use them, or 2) yes, use dowels because they aid in alignment and add joint strength. If you're edge gluing 4 8/4 red oak boards, 2 10" wide and 2 7" wide, would you dowel? If so every foot or so between the boards? Just curious.

~JP

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joey Goodwin

Since my crazy ideas really weren't very good, and I've decided to wait for the wood to dry and then glue my edge joins... I'm wondering about doweling. I'm reading conflicting reports that 1) dowel joins actually detract from the project and add no joint strength whatsoever and don't use them, or 2) yes, use dowels because they aid in alignment and add joint strength. If you're edge gluing 4 8/4 red oak boards, 2 10" wide and 2 7" wide, would you dowel? If so every foot or so between the boards? Just curious.

~JP

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No, I would not use dowels along the length of those boards. For one, a good butt glue joint is darn strong. The wood around the joint is likely to fail before the glue does. For two, dowels for me turn into a terrific hassle. You have to bore all the holes exactly aligned with each other. If the drill wanders just a tad while you're drilling, the holes don't align, and the dowel doesn't fit into both boards. If you must use something to help with alignment during glue-up, use biscuits. They have much larger tolerances than dowels.

Well good news and bad news. I have the oak boards 'drying' in the room where the bench will reside. The bad news is that I noticed today that they've started checking quite a bit. I checked the MC and as expected the middle faces are still between 14 and 15% while the ends are 11 to 12%. I've read that if you don't treat the ends in the first 12 hours that you can't really prevent checking from occurring just slow it a bit. Not sure how accurate this is but we're 3 weeks out from cutting. They were cut a few days before they were brought to me. So if the 12 hour thing is accurate, I was doomed to checking no matter what.

The good news is that I was given the boards so I'm not out of pocket for the wood.

At this point I'm not sure what to do. Is there any point to treating the ends and letting the wood continue to dry? Do I go ahead and wet sand to fill the grain hoping that this will slow or prevent further checking?

I did finish framing out the base and it turned out extremely sturdy. Adding 8 additional cross braces will do that ;)

Anyhow I'd appreciate any thoughts on the matter. Its my first project. It is a learning experience. No matter what happens with it I'm coming out ahead because I am gaining knowledge.

Thanks!
Joey.

P.S. I can post pictures tomorrow if that'll help to understand the extent of the checking so you can tailor your advice based on real visual data rather than my definition of 'severe'.

Yes treat the ends, use whatever is handy, wax, paint, tar...I have had good results with a few coats of leftover interior house paint, it dries fast. This will let the moisture even out some and partly heal the checks.

Definitely don't waste time finishing first.

First let you stock acclimate a few weeks, then get it fairly flat. Get the edges straight. Time to join it into a bench top.

Dowels will be a pain, there is a better way. Make tongue and groove joints.

If you can reduce your bench top dimensions a bit it will give you room to trim your stock. You may need this.

Once joined, flatten some more.

How will you fasten it to the base?

Since you haven’t done any woodworking I assume you don’t have much in the way of tools. If you give your approximate location you might get someone here to give you an assist. I know I enjoy helping out others that can benefit from my shop. If you’re going to wait for the wood to dry taking the time to joint and plane ( straighten and thickness) before glueing will give you superior results.

I'm planning on getting back to it this weekend. Right now my life is turned upside down remodeling a bedroom so no time to spare. I'll go ahead and seal the ends and go from there. As for attaching to the base, I'm not 100% sure. Learning project here and all that. But as I have time I'll read up on the various methods. As I don't plan on removing the top I suppose some mostly permanent method would be preferred, keeping in mind I'll be using this for reloading and I don't want any flex or play in the top. If it matters, I'll most likely use a slightly elevated mounting stand for the press. That or I'll put down a fairly hefty slab of steel to distribute the force across a wider area of the bench top.

Steve thanks for the tip. I'll definitely keep that in mind as I get closer to optimum MC :)

Thanks all. Much appreciated.