The photos below show a bench I made. I bought “character oak” which is a fancy name for oak with lots of knots and worm holes. It took two years of hunting to find oak nasty enough. I cut the oak into strips and glued them up. The bench is a little too wide for my 15” planer so I did it in two sections.
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now we want to make a matching dining table. My plan is to make it about 2” thick. It will have the same welded ‘C’ shaped legs. The table will be about 3’ x 5’.
My question is about splitting. What causes these tables to split and what can I do to avoid it? The wood will be custom milled for me by a one man shop in rural Virginia so I can have it milled any way I want.