# How to laminate thick wood planks for table?



## summit583guy

Ive got some 3'' maple planks that will be 18'' wide (each) that I want to join togethor with a live edge on the outside. What would be the best route to take to laminate these two heavy planks?

A) has to be solid and safe
b) I dont have all the woodworking tools a modern shop would have
c) I have access to a planer and table saw.

My original plan was to turn the planks sideways, tack a long vertical piece of hardwood along the edge and run a router down it to make a spline inlay and then glue in a long vertical piece of wood approx 1.5 wide and then 3 or 4 butterflys ontop.


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## BlueRider

A spline isn't going to add that much strength. It will add surface area to the joint but the grain direvtion of the spline is such that the spline will be weaker than the two pieces you are joining. 

On a 3" thick slab a butt joint will be plenty strong. But you will want a couple of cross braces or some structure to the base of the table that will suport the top across the width and you will really need to acomodate the movement along the width.


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## Dave Boyt

If I visualize your plan correctly, consider taking the pieces to a wood shop and having the edges jointed so that they are perfectly straight and square. It will save you a lot of time and frustration, and the glued joint will be nearly invisible. I'd also advise using biscuits to keep the parts aligned while gluing. The shop that does the jointing could probably make the biscuit cuts. Biggest concern is moisture content. Even after gluing, the boards will shrink and cup, unless they are kiln dry under 8%. Drying slabs that thick will take some time! What sort of finish do you plan to use? Woodweb.com has a project gallery that might give you some design ideas. Photos when you have it finished!


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## qbilder

Dowels would be great for alignment, too. You can pick up a dowel jig at the hardware store for less than $50. Plane both planks and use that surface as the dowel jig guide. I agree 100% about jointing. The jointer will be the most important tool of this job. Glue won't hold anything if the surfaces aren't in 100% contact.


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## Sawyer Rob

First and formost! Where will this table be kept? Inside a house?? and how dry are the planks now?? (what moisture content in the CENTER) If they aren't dry in the center NOW, you will have some big problems with those wide planks later!

ALSO, it's going to make a difference if they are flatsawn or quartersawn.

SR


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## summit583guy

These planks are what i believe to be flat sawed ( I milled two planks off the top of the log and kept two of the wider pieces after that).

The tree was standing dead for about two years before i dropped it and milled it up, they have been kept out of the elements for about 8 months and have stop checking and cracking as of late leading me to believe they are dry. Where can i buy a inexpensive moisture meter? and how much are they?

I will for sure be using a joiner to true up the edges, I will first mill the edges off with a bandsaw mill then take it to a shop for to get trued up.

I think biscuits will be two week for this application, I was thinking of buying some 3/4 '' round hardwood dowling and putting 2 or 3 dowels per foot aswell as gluing and running support braces underneath horizontal wise.


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## Sawyer Rob

summit583guy said:


> These planks are what i believe to be flat sawed ( I milled two planks off the top of the log and kept two of the wider pieces after that).
> 
> The tree was standing dead for about two years before i dropped it and milled it up, they have been kept out of the elements for about 8 months and have stop checking and cracking as of late leading me to believe they are dry. Where can i buy a inexpensive moisture meter? and how much are they?
> 
> I will for sure be using a joiner to true up the edges, I will first mill the edges off with a bandsaw mill then take it to a shop for to get trued up.
> 
> I think biscuits will be two week for this application, I was thinking of buying some 3/4 '' round hardwood dowling and putting 2 or 3 dowels per foot aswell as gluing and running support braces underneath horizontal wise.



So, it's flat sawn in BC and has not been in a controled enviroment...

The moisture content will now be right around 20% "in the middle", as you don't exactly live in the desert! That's TOO WET for something that when finished, will end up indoors through the winter.

A 3" glue joint needs NOTHING to strengthen it, if the glue alone isn't strong enough, you didn't get a decent glue joint in the first place. Dowels will add very LITTLE strength, and in some cases even weaken the joint, don't waste your time with them!

No matter, until you get the MC down to where it should be, you are not going to "end up with" a nice flat top on your table...

SR


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## Dave Boyt

The suggestion of the biscuit joints or dowels was only to align the parts, not to strengthen the joint. Rob is right about the effect on strength (an end-grain glue joint would be a different matter). If you try to constrain wood from shrinking, you will force it to crack. The old-timers designed tables so that the wood could "float". That is, move without destroying the integrity of the furniture. Trestle tables are a great example. If you can, take a good look at rustic and shaker furniture, and you'll see what I mean. If you understand how wood shrinks as it dries and how to accommodate it, you might get by with your boards as they are, though it will likely cup on you. Otherwise, you can get a pin type moisture meter from Baileysonline.com. Not too expensive. Ideally, you would want to the board to hold 8% moisture content for at least a week before working with it. It takes a while for moisture to move through a 3" thick board.


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## trimmmed

qbilder said:


> Dowels would be great for alignment, too. You can pick up a dowel jig at the hardware store for less than $50. Plane both planks and use that surface as the dowel jig guide. I agree 100% about jointing. The jointer will be the most important tool of this job. Glue won't hold anything if the surfaces aren't in 100% contact.



That's gotta be some hardware store you got there that'll have a doweling jig for 3" thick boards for 50 bucks! 

Me.......I would surface plane all planks to uniform thickness, that will give you a shot at surface alignment. Something just a bit less than 3" thick would be more accommodating to my tools. 
Then I would straightline rip each edge to be joined. Then set the two edges with a 3/8" gap. Make a jig to guide my router with a 1/2" bit down the centerline of the 3/8" gap set previously. If that cut doesn't get it perfect (it will be close) I'd make a second one. 

Dowels won't help much and sure won't hold any 3" maple boads. Biscuits are garbage for anything.....they are just something else to buy and don't do a damn thing. 

I would consider alternating rail bolts, they are much stronger, you can wrench them until the glue squeezes out, you could also re-adjust them later if you had to.......a good possibility with 3" maple of questionable dryness. Plugs for those bolts would be on bottom of course.

Of course, a 3" plank table with live edges would only need a good joint not a perfect one in my opinion. Ymmv.........post pics however you go.


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## qbilder

trimmmed said:


> That's gotta be some hardware store you got there that'll have a doweling jig for 3" thick boards for 50 bucks!
> 
> 
> 
> Dowels won't help much and sure won't hold any 3" maple boads. Biscuits are garbage for anything.....they are just something else to buy and don't do a damn thing.



Home Depot (Revolving Turret Dowelling Jig-840 at The Home Depot). And the dowels don't hold anything together. They are for alignment. A few dowels the length of the joint will put the surface of each board dead nuts to one another so it can be clamped for glue drying. The glue is the joint's strength. 3/8" dowels are all that's needed. This method is used in kitchen tables every day to keep each leaf on level with the others. This job doesn't have to be a complex one. All he wants to do is join two slabs. IMO, there is no more proper way to that than simply glue it, with dowels to align it. It's an old, tried & true wood working method. 

Once the slabs are glued they will not come apart. I'd bet my money that a good glue joint on 3" slabs would actually hold stronger than the wood itself. If it breaks, it won't be on the glue joint. And once it's joined, it's going to get used as a table top, which means it'll (should) have a frame under it that stabilize the legs & support the top. 

But again, the dowels merely align the slabs for gluing, and keep them aligned so there's no slippage when clamped. Doesn't need to be heavy or big dowels, just short buttons that dictate how the slabs locate to one another. Same idea as with biscuits. They aren't for strength. They're for alignment. And they're not garbage or useless. Basic woodworking 101.


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## mikeb1079

well said qbilder....


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## trimmmed

qbilder said:


> Home Depot (Revolving Turret Dowelling Jig-840 at The Home Depot). And the dowels don't hold anything together. They are for alignment. A few dowels the length of the joint will put the surface of each board dead nuts to one another so it can be clamped for glue drying. The glue is the joint's strength. 3/8" dowels are all that's needed. This method is used in kitchen tables every day to keep each leaf on level with the others. This job doesn't have to be a complex one. All he wants to do is join two slabs. IMO, there is no more proper way to that than simply glue it, with dowels to align it. It's an old, tried & true wood working method.
> 
> Once the slabs are glued they will not come apart. I'd bet my money that a good glue joint on 3" slabs would actually hold stronger than the wood itself. If it breaks, it won't be on the glue joint. And once it's joined, it's going to get used as a table top, which means it'll (should) have a frame under it that stabilize the legs & support the top.
> 
> But again, the dowels merely align the slabs for gluing, and keep them aligned so there's no slippage when clamped. Doesn't need to be heavy or big dowels, just short buttons that dictate how the slabs locate to one another. Same idea as with biscuits. They aren't for strength. They're for alignment. And they're not garbage or useless. Basic woodworking 101.



Spare me the dowels in tabletops as being standard........I bet 99.999% of laminated wood tops have never seen dowels and certainly not biscuits. Tried and true method??? You've seen this in most antiques? Woodworking 101......hmm I have a BoS degree in Woodworking Manufacturing, even taught WW 101 for a semester at the college.......but don't recall biscuits as part of the curriculum.  I firmly believe them to be junk, unnecessary, and useless in woodworking but I do use them, both plastic and wood....mostly on exterior trimwork. The plastic ones fit better, fwiw or if anybody cares  

Let me ask you why you need anything to align a correctly prepared glue joint. What is it exactly that would be out of alignment that a dowel could cure? How much maple have you laminated personally, curious how you build your cues...are they mostly solid or does laminating offer you an advantage? A polyvinyl acetate edge glued joint will ALWAYS be stronger than the wood, that goes without saying, but if you have glued any amount of maple, no matter how well prepped you will get some failures.

How many biscuits have you used, I use them sometimes daily. They don't really align anything as there is play between the hole and the biscuit.......you have to still align your surfaces just prior to clamp pressure. Dowels don't have that play but my point is that if your joints are done well, all you need is the joint itself and the ability to clamp it skillfully. Start one end and clamp, if it needs to move to align, a rubber mallet will do that......get it where you want it.....tighten clamp. If that doesn't get it your joint is not good enough anyway. And all the chi-com die cast crap tools from home depot won't help.......that tool actually jigs off the woodwork you've already done. And your little short buttons of dowels as you call them won't do one damn thing to correct alignment issues in 3" maple planks........not today, not yesterday, not ever.


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## qbilder

edited. not worth arguing. apparently i'm not smart enough to see if something works or not.


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## Sawyer Rob

I don't have a BS in woodworking but i've been accused of having a PHD in BS! lol

I started my own custom furniture/cabinet shop in the 70's, and ran it for many years. I still "dabble" in woodworking and have everything (tool wise) to make anything i want.

Having said that, i quit useing dowells so many years ago, i forget what i last built with them. There are just so many better ways to do glue up's, i wouldn't waste my time on them. Waaaaaaay back when, you were taught to use them, but i soon learned better ways to do things, including aligning boards for glue up.

I'm not saying they won't help a little in alignment, but i am saying i wouldn't invest any money to buy a jig and have i have NO dowells on hand as they just aren't needed!

If i was doing the OP's glue up, i'd start with DRY lumber!! Then i'd circle saw (skilsaw) the edges, then running them over a jointer. Then i'd do the glue up without anything in the joint but glue! and finish leveling the top through a planer after the glue was dry...

If it was too wide, i'd plane them first and just be careful with the glue joint when clamping. i've done this many times, BUT you have to start with DRY stable lumber! AND, i'm betting the OP's lumber isn't dry enough.

SR


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## lps8

*table stuff*

I have been following all the comments on the glue up. I'm kinda new at this but, here's what I found.

1. Dry lumber, my house's moisture content is 7or 8 percent. So when I put down my floor, walls, ceiling, (all pine wood) in my new house, I dried it all before installing and ran dehumidifiers to keep moisture down during construction.

2. To get more contact on my glue joint, I used a exterior door rail and style set to edge join the boards. The other thing this did was to keep the surface lined up. That is after planing to a uniform thickness and edge trueing.

View attachment 242999







I have built 5 of these doors and am making my counter tops 2' wide out of cedar and all the cabinets and built ins.

This door is made from cedar and the bottom of the door are boards of different widths glued using the rail and style bits. The doors have 3/8" all thread from side to side just to make sure the hang together over the long run. The doors are finished sanded with a da as they were too big and bulky to run thru the sander. The parts were run thru the drum sander to get to a uniform thickness, though.


In short, I could have edge glued, but using the rail and stile bit does 2 things, alignment and more glue surface.

Larry

just the way I did it, not necessarily the easiest or best way.


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## BlueRider

I don't normaly use dowels in edge joints but a couple of days ago I did a glue up where I used them for precision allignment. I was gluining up the back of a chair that is 6" wide when looking at the chair from the front and when looking at it from the side it has a boomerang shape. I could work two laminations at a time to make sure they were the same but I had no way to work the whole back. so my solution was to drill for smallish dowels that were only really used to locate one piece to another. that way once things were shaped and slathered with slippery glue the parts went together easily and there is no missalignment to deal with. When glueing things up I didn't even put glue in the holes for the dowels since there were not used for strentgh, just to align things during the glue dance.

I have also used dowels on very large parts. I am a one man shop and on large glue ups anythng I can do to make things go smoother and save wasted motions during a glue up gives me a better chance of success.

As all this relates to the original poster It sounded like his tools and skill level were at a beginners stage and at that level I think we can all agree that a simple butt joint is suffiinetly strong. If the Op uses the nexet year or so while his boards are drying to aquire some tools and skills and try using some dowels great, but I also think we can all agree the more important part is getting the boards flat and the edges square.


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## glennschumann

*Helpful salt in a wound...*

I've glued planks, but never used any alignment dowels / bisquits / muffins etc. With large planks, however, alignment can be an issue. Rarely, if ever, are large planks perfectly flat with surfaces parallel to each other. Even if they start out that way, wait a week with a humidity change, and something will be off by a 1/64" or so. Also, perfectly jointed, planed planks also tend to slip and slide at the glue joint when clamped together So this is my strategy:

Joint the edges to the best you can with a hand plane, table saw, jointer, power planer sand paper or what ever your choice. Make sure that when you dry clamp, the glued edges come together well. Spread glue on the joint surfaces as appropriate, then, on one of the glued edges, sprinkled a little salt from your salt shaker. No more than a pinch is necessary for a thick, 8' plank, just a little here and there. Now, clamp them together. As you bring the boards together, the salt will act like tiny little alignment pins, and prevent the boards from slipping when you squeeze them together. You may hear the salt crush, but that is OK. When this is all dry, you will have to use a scraper / plane to clean up the glue joint anyway, and any differences in levels between the boards can be leveled then.

No fancy jigs, expensive tools, or trips to the wood workers store for bisquits that have become cat toys.

I used to use fine sand, but decided that it would be harder on my tools for scraping, and cutting if I ever had to saw the joint apart due to a failure.

Hope that helps.

Schumann


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## Blades of stihl

I don't hold any degrees but I used to work for a flooring company doing hardwood staircases. One time we made a conference table out of black walnut. We thickness sanded the planks, jointed the edges and glued 'em up as good as possible. It was a large table so no matter how we shuffled the planks, it wasn't perfect. No problem, just busted out the flooring (drum) sander and went through the grits like it was a floor, then buffed it to 220 and it came out great! So I'd say the dowels/pins/biscuit alignment is unnecessary and if it doesn't cooperate on the glue up just rent a buffer, if it's bad (1/16" off) then get the drum too. The butterflies are a good idea for the long term (grandchildren) and can be a decorative feature, but take a fair amount of skill to execute. But, hey you cut wood all day anyway, give it a try! Looking forward to pics.


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## Brian Harnett

glennschumann's salt trick works well, I do it on some of my jobs biscuits work to but why do it if you don't have the machine, I would be concerned about moisture Ryobi makes a moisture meter for around 50.00 not as accurate as a pin meter but convenient, when doing large glue ups I rip the boards down narrower and flip the grain, I realize you may want the big board effect so the wood should be properly dried to minimize problems in the future.

This table was made with butterfly joints they run though the whole top they were done on my cnc but before I had that a router with a template was used for similar work.


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## BC WetCoast

Just a quick note for the OP. You can get a moisture meter at Lee Valley.


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