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Thread: Making the most of cheap, thin, bowed walnut.

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2018
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    Westmont, IL
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    Making the most of cheap, thin, bowed walnut.

    Hello, all! I am new to the forum but have been lurking for a while. I finally arrived at a question I felt wasn’t fully resolved by the search function.

    I wanted to make a 36”x84” trestle table out of walnut. I planned for no apron and at least 6/4 tabletop and trestles. I’ve milled boards before, but that was with my dad’s lunchbox planer and his jointer and I am now 1000 miles away. I now have a scrub plane, jointing plane, jack plane, and a smoothing plane, but I was trying to postpone learning how to mill from the rough by hand. It looks like my efforts failed, and I was hoping for your advice.

    I learned of a private individual with 41 year old stickered and air-dried, s3s, slr on the 4th walnut, who advertised having it in 7/4 and ¾. I drafted my plans to use the 7/4 for the tabletop, but when I arrived at his barn I found there was not enough at that thickness. I thought I had made an acceptable extemporaneous compromise by buying the tabletop boards in ¾ instead.

    I was a little excited at the price, and wanted to get out of the guy’s hair, so I was only able to thoroughly inspect these boards when I got home. I found some winding, moderate to severe bowing on both axes, and some snipe. He said he milled it himself, and I can’t fault him for being imperfect, and the price he was asking is still extremely fair even for rough lumber. But if I re-mill the ¾, it might be smaller than ½ even if spot-planing. ¾ was too thin for the form or function of a trestle table anyway, so I know I made a dumb call. Unfortunately, I am close to blowing my budget for the table.

    The way I figure, we all have 5 resources; money, time, effort, creativity, and skill. I have plenty of time and effort. I am hoping that this could be an entertaining thought exercise that also allows me learn from some of your skill and creativity. If there is just no here replacement for money, I understand. What would you do if you were me?


    1. Would you be grateful for the 7/4 you did get for the trestles, and wait for a while until you can buy the same for the tabletop, in the meantime using the 3/4 walnut for other smaller projects with the knowledge that more thickness would be retained by working it in shorter lengths?

    2. Would you go back for more ¾ at $3/bf, re-mill it all, and laminate for a final thickness of about 1”, as Prashun Patel suggests here?: https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?244828-Walnut-Top-Trestle-Dining-Table-Advice-on-Secondary-Wood&p=2576522 Would laminating the top impact the ability to use mortise and tenon and breadboards at all? Would it negatively impact the appearance in your opinion?

    3. Would you go back for more ¾, and in the place of a breadboard, make an overengineered apron and brace setup with a billion cabinetmakers buttons/z-clips/figure 8 fasteners to prepare for the racking and warp? Would you equalize with biscuits or try to re-bend the stock like here: https://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthr...in-a-table-top
    Can you only thoroughly mill appearance and reference surfaces to retain some thickness?


    4. I plan to use knock-down joinery. Would you go for a cheaper top material temporarily with the knowledge that the top can be replaced when skill and $ allow? I could get 6/4 maple for $4.88/bf or 6/4 live-edge ash for ~6.80/bf. Maybe I could go with S4S and come back to this when I learn how to hand mill on shorter boards.

    5. Something better than my dumb ideas?

    I’ve been told that you can’t learn unless your reach exceeds your grasp, so I don’t regret getting in over my head. But I recognize that in heeding that admonishment, I signed up for either a whole lot of learning or a long wait on this project. Thank you for any lessons you can lend.

    Jordan

    Last edited by Jordan Reed; 02-01-2018 at 4:02 PM.

  2. #2
    For me the determining factor is "fitness for use". A trestle table is an informal style ,I see nothing wrong with laminating ,and staggering the glue joints. And of course many trestle tables get the breadboard ends ,if you want those and make them of unlaminated stuff ,the lams will not be seen.

  3. #3
    Join Date
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    Michigan
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    It's hard to hand mill consistently enough to laminate well. I would do something else.

  4. #4
    Tom, you caught a big detail I missed. Thanks. I think the fine print "made me do it"

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    SE Michigan
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    Hi Jordan, and welcome to the creek! First, I’ve been there. Bring home some nice stock, let it sit for awhile, and it turns to a banana or something. Or, like you, you find it’s just not enough. And it always comes down to some sort of compromise I likely won’t be happy with long term.

    If I were in your situation, I’d probably either go with the maple or ash in the size I want, or wait until I could get the thicker walnut. Tom’s right...hand planning to a flat surface in order to face glue without any edge gaps can be a very challenging task.

    Another option I would seriously consider - and it’s really an aesthetic issue - is to rip the stock you have into 2” strips and face laminate those strips into a 8/4 top. Even with a little wiggle room, that should allow you to get to around 7/4 when you plane the whole glue up flat. You could even mix the 7/4 with the 3/4 you have to get varying widths in the glue up.

    Something like this:

    3A8E3B69-D387-4DD6-B3EF-9A025DA77BDE.jpeg

    Just a thought.

  6. #6
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    Feb 2018
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    Westmont, IL
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    Mel, Tom, and Phil, I am glad I asked here because I would have never seen the nightmare coming until I was mock-assembling for the lamination, and by that time I would have already wasted hours.

    Would you buy a $50 lunchbox planer on CL and 2 more layers of that 3/4 walnut for $113 more dollars to get to 7/4 after planing? I have the facilities to sharpen lunchbox planer blades. If I staggered like brick, breadboards would conceal the endgrain, but the sides would still betray it's 3 layers.

    The alternatives cherry or maple at $302 and $294 at 8/4, respectively, counting 20% waste. I could hand-plane those.

    Or, the blaspheme of $32 of Menard's fiiinest kiln-dried construction grade 31 s4s pine 2x10 + the price of a moisture meter and time. I would rather die than be Ana White; tell me, is there honor in a tabletop for which a ballpoint is kryptonite? With a casual and maybe rustic context like a trestle table? I expended the effort and waited patiently for a source like the one I have for walnut to avoid this very path.

    What would you do?
    Last edited by Jordan Reed; 02-02-2018 at 2:40 PM.

  7. #7
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    Westmont, IL
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  8. #8
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
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    SE Michigan
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    Hi Jordan,
    First of all, a lunchbox planer has been very useful to me in my woodworking, and in my opinion a good investment. My typical work routine is to flaten one face with hand planes, and then run it through the planer to dress the opposite face and bring it to final thickness.

    Second, if you go that route, and you do breadboard ends, you could glue a thin walnut veneer down both sides to hide the lamination. The end grain of that veneer would be hidden by the breadboard ends.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2018
    Location
    Westmont, IL
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    What about putting one of the few 7/4 boards on the outermost sides of the panel like with the breadboards? Is it possible that the layers of 3/4 expand at different rates and cause issue? Sorry, I am having a hard time finding resourced about laminating in this way, is there a name for it?

    Thank you,

    Jordan

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
    Location
    SE Michigan
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    That is actually a good solution. Glue the 3/4 stock face to face to thickness, then glue the 7/4 stock along the edge. For the 3/4 face to face glue ups, google using cauls. They will help keep firm pressure across the width of the boards. I’ll warn you though...sometimes it takes 3 or more hands to get everything clamped up!

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Sep 2013
    Location
    Northern Minnesota
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    30
    Quote Originally Posted by Jordan Reed View Post
    This was the exact article I was thinking of...

  12. #12
    I have done several "pallet wood" projects where the goal was to use free (or super cheap) but oddball wood to make a "Real" piece... And it's can be a fun challenge of it's own.... But - it's a TON of extra work for you when you do it.... And that means your jointing and laminating skills will need to be bang-on...

    For example - say you laminate the top starting with the 3/4" stock.. Likely - you will have to clean it up to around 1/2" to use... Then joint up the edges and ends, glue up all that stuff.. Clean up all the joints, re-flatten.... Then joint top and back and laminate again... Say the top is 3' wide and you are using 6" stock... That's probably going to require a minimum of 12 edge joints + however more are needed to make full length pieces + the lamination of the top and back together... That lamination is tricky - you don't want a wavy, glue gap mess.. You could easily end up with 25+ joints just to make the top... More if you decide to slice the stock into thin strips and edge joint it all.... Certainly doable but it's a zillion joints you have to get basically perfect on a show face...

    It sounds like a fun and cool project... But one I would rather do with thicker stock so I wouldn't have to laminate the top...

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