Could be a dumb question

[Eric Rathhaus]

I'm building the moravian bench and purchased 1 by 5 in strips of maple and walnut from a salvage yard to laminate for the top. The maple is finished but the walnut faces are still rough. Do I need to plane the faces of the walnut before I laminate the strips?

[Bill Dindner]

I'm building the moravian bench and purchased 1 by 5 in strips of maple and walnut from a salvage yard to laminate for the top. The maple is finished but the walnut faces are still rough. Do I need to plane the faces of the walnut before I laminate the strips?

Yes, you may have luck without flattening wood for a glue up, but it may not work out. A bit of a crap shoot.

I have found that even fully surfaced lumber is generally not actually flat and square enough for quality results in my projects.

[Steven Mikes]

Planing long boards for a bench without a bench to work on is pretty hard. I built my bench out of the cheapest 2x4s from Home Depot and just glued them together without flattening. Would not recommend it, although it hasn't fallen apart yet. Post pictures of your bench build! I am looking forward to building my own Moravian bench soon (also going to be in Winston Salem on Monday but *of course* the museum will be closed. Will have to find another weekend soon to visit and see the original!)

[Jim Koepke]

I built my bench out of the cheapest 2x4s from Home Depot and just glued them together without flattening.

Hi Steven,

What type of glue did you use?

My understanding is some glues can fill minor gaps and some can't.

jtk

[Robert Hazelwood]

if you mean that the walnut boards are actually rough-sawn, then yes you must clean up those faces before gluing up. Since the strips are only 1" thick, you do not need to get them perfectly straight along their lengths, but you have to make them smooth and without any humps along the lengths- only a gradual bow would be acceptable. You will also need to flatten the faces across their widths (remove any cupping). All of this is to ensure a good glue bond between each pair of faces.

IF you are going to do this by hand, a jack plane and a smoother would be the tools to use. But this is a lot of surface area to plane from the rough, so I would be looking to see if I could borrow or use a planer. You can skip plane these boards and have them ready to glue fairly quickly.

[ken hatch]

I'm building the moravian bench and purchased 1 by 5 in strips of maple and walnut from a salvage yard to laminate for the top. The maple is finished but the walnut faces are still rough. Do I need to plane the faces of the walnut before I laminate the strips?

Eric,

Maybe a dumber question. Why Maple and Walnut? One more: Will the bench be shop sized or portable?

BTW, an excellent decision on the Moravian bench build. I'm on my third build (waiting on the base wood) and I'm more impressed with the benches everytime I use them and expect my French/English bench will become the secondary bench once the large Moravian is finished. As it is now the small portable Moravian is used in the shop almost as much as the large French/English bench.

ken

[Eric Rathhaus]

Thanks, Robert. I'm transitioning from power tools so that I have jointer planer etc. I know it's sacrilege but I plan to use the power tools to cut to size, true, and square the bench top parts.

[Eric Rathhaus]

Hi Ken, necessity. It was the only cheap, salvaged hardwoods they had. I wanted to go all maple but there weren't enough of those slats that reached 3.5" wide. And most of the walnut was about 6" wide. If I went all walnut, I'd pay for all that lumber only to rip off at least a third into useless strips. So it seemed like the mix was the cheapest way to go.

[brian zawatsky]

Thanks, Robert. I'm transitioning from power tools so that I have jointer planer etc. I know it's sacrilege but I plan to use the power tools to cut to size, true, and square the bench top parts.

I wouldn’t call that sacrilege at all. Most guys here - myself included - use jointer & planer for stock prep. I reserve the hand tools for finish work & joinery tasks. That’s the fun part, anyway.
Just to throw my 2 cents in, I’d joint one face of each piece and then plane the other side parallel before glueing up, even on the pieces that are surfaced. Dead flat mating surfaces will get you a solid stable bench top

[Jim Koepke]

I know it's sacrilege…

Believe me, if there was a jointer or planer in my shop it would be put to use.

jtk

[ken hatch]

Eric,

Hi Ken, necessity. It was the only cheap, salvaged hardwoods they had. I wanted to go all maple but there weren't enough of those slats that reached 3.5" wide. And most of the walnut was about 6" wide. If I went all walnut, I'd pay for all that lumber only to rip off at least a third into useless strips. So it seemed like the mix was the cheapest way to go.

Eric,

Walnut is darker than I like for a bench slab, but then that’s my preference. Do you have enough Maple for a 11”-15” slab? If so I would think about doing that and use the Walnut for the back side of the slab. Not as pretty as alternating Maple and Walnut but a bench is a tool not furniture. BTW, one of my Moravian builds started off with a split slab. It worked but because it was a small bench I decided to replace the back slab with a tool tray.

Good luck,

ken

[Eric Rathhaus]

Planning on 13.5". Thanks for the input. I hadn't though of darkness as much of a factor, but that's why I like this site. I'll try laying our the boards in me shop before glue up to get a feel for how it could look. I have more maple than walnut and I was thinking of try to have to bands of walnut where I'm going to put the bench dogs.

[David Eisenhauer]

I have a split top Ruobo style bench made from SYP but it does have a walnut racing stripe where the square dogs for my tail vise run plus walnut chops for the tail, leg and face vises. It looks way cooler than I can back it up with. Too late to head for the shop to take a photo of but let me know if you want one tomorrow am.

[Matt Lau]

Hey Eric,

Post pictures when you are done.

It sounds like it'll be a beauty