Question about laminating multiple pieces of wood together

[Mark Hill]

I need to build table legs for use indoors in Maryland. They need to be 2 1/2" square. I must use reclaimed white oak that is about 6" wide and 1" thick. If I plane, stack and glue together the faces of 3 boards I end up with a piece that is roughly 6" wide and 3" thick. I can then cut this to 2 1/2" square. I don't know if the wood is flat, quarter or riff sawn. The wood is from old horse farm fencing and will all come from the same lot, so it's history, storage and moisture content will be substantially similar.

My question is ... am I going to have any issues with wood movement amongst the 3 boards that could result in warping, cracking, twisting or other failures?

I've done quite a bit of wood working but have never done this. Honestly, seasonal wood movement mystifies me a bit as I have read about it and seen all the You Tube videos, but it has never seemed to be as much of a problem as all the warnings suggest. Nevertheless, this is an expensive custom build and I can't afford to have problems with it.

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Andrew Hughes]

I think laminating wood together is very stable if the moisture content is low. It’s something I avoid doing for table legs simply because it’s hard to hide the fact it’s a laminated leg.
If you can try to slip match the boards so the grain can help hide the lamination lines.
Good Luck

[Mark Hill]

Thank you, Andrew. I hear you about the lamination look. It's going into a kitchen counter piece where one face is very visible, one is partially visible and the other two won't be visible at all. The client wants to use this wood specifically and I let them know it would have to be laminated. I think it will look OK in this case.

Thinking about it, maybe it would be better to build a mitered box with 2 1/2" sides. I could skip plane the sides and left rustic, the miter joints wouldn't be very visible at all.

[Andrew Hughes]

The mitered corners is something to consider. My own experience with mitered is they are tricky to get right. It's a lot of work. I try to think about do I have wood for back up in case this path goes wrong.
I have no idea what the condition of the wood is your working with.
I believe you will use good judgment.
Good luck

[Daniel Smith]

Morris chair legs are commonly laminated in the same way to get a similar thickness. You can skin the faces that show the glue lines with a veneer of the same material to hide them.

[John TenEyck]

If the boards for each leg have the same grain orientation it should be fine long term. But if one of the boards is QS and the others are plain sawn, or the other way around, they are going to fight each other with seasonal movement which could lead to a joint failure over time. I made a turned pedestal 25 years ago when I knew even less about wood than I know now. I used what I had to glue up the blank and one of the boards had a different grain orientation than the others. After 10 years or so I started to see a split in on of the joints. I think I used TB II but I'm not sure. I am sure it was TB of some sort.

You might consider another alternative construction. You could glue up the legs from some other wood, like soft maple, and then glue on a 1/8" veneer of your show wood on all four faces. That will give you a stable core and eliminate seeing the lamination joints.

John