I came to a harsh realization the other day when working on Leah’s bookcase…not having a decent workbench sucks bad! I walked in the house with my tail between my legs and explained that her bookcase would be delayed a little longer while I built at least my benchtop. I explained that I really needed the bench space because I was tired of being held back by my cheap flimsy bench with limited space. She said she understood and it was back out to the shop.
I decided to do the lamination in 3 board sections, so I began jointing, planing and cutting everything to dimension. My first 3 board glue up was all over the place. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t get it perfectly aligned. So after the glue up, it was back to the jointer and planer. After quite a bit of work, I was very happy with the result, but like I said, a lot of work.
On the next glue up, I decided to run a row of biscuits 1 inch from the bottom for better alignment. This was exactly what I needed and they went together beatifully. There will still be a little jointer and planer work, but much better. And with 3 inches above the biscuits, there is planty of meat for flattening the top through the years. So with that set, I was off to glue up the remaining 3 board sections, which are still in the clamps as I type this. The idea is to joint/plane each of these sections to the same thickness and glue them up two at a time. At that point, I can still get them through my planer for surfacing. I should be in pretty good shape when I glue up the entire assembly and have to pull out my #5 and #7. I knew this slab would be heavy, but I clamped it all up before glue up just to see and massive seems to be an understatement. Here’s a few pictures at various stages.
