Bow in a 9' Table Top

[Prashun Patel]

"For good kiln dried material maybe that's not an issue?"

It's controllable with good, properly dried and acclimated material. The narrower the boards the less movement (so if you can use 6" wide planks instead of 10", 12", you will help your cause. The reason is that the rings on a flatsawn board will have a bigger arc than a bunch of narrower boards. But then your cathedral grain on the top is also interrupted, so this creates issues matching the boards, but I suspect this is exactly the look you are going for.

If you really need to use 4/4, you can still get a pretty good edge if you take care to choose the edge boards that have good, straight grain. However, getting a straight run for 9 feet may require some sifting and sorting. It has also been my experience that glue lines even with the best of efforts have a way of showing themselves after some time. To this end, you can help this by dyeing your glue with a drop of Transtint in the same hue of your cerused finish.

[Tom Linton]

Thanks, good suggestions.