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Cliff, I like the idea of a leather pad, since that will cut down on scratches. If that doesn't work, you might want to look at maple. I don't think light will have much of an impact on it, though it can impact some finishes. Walnut is my favorite wood to work with, but it gets bleached out with sunlight, so I would stay away from that or cherry.
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Leather, glued and held down with brass escutcheon pins.
http://www.heathsrestoration.com/designs.html
![[Image: multi_line_design_leather_sample_4-161x145.jpg]](http://www.heathsrestoration.com/sitebuilder/images/multi_line_design_leather_sample_4-161x145.jpg)
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A glued leather top sounds perfect. Thank you both for the suggestions.
Cliff
‘The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence
Charles Bukowski
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Bonded leather, which is the leather equivalent to MDF, might be an economical alternative. While I would not want to use bonded leather for a jacket or for a chair, the product has been used for many, many years for wedding album covers and book binding where the amount of stretching is minimal.
I now see that the bonded leather technology is making this product useful to the furniture industry, but personally I would not use it for upholstery.
But for your non-flexing, non-stretching table top environment it should do just fine. The color and finish are top coat only, and are the same as the top coat only leather used in jackets and furniture.
The best leathers are "vat dyed" and the color runs all the way through. While that is nice for a jacket, it is not an issue for table tops.
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Cliff,
If you're going to glue down a leather top, I suggest you use something other than solid wood for the substrate. A wide solid wood top will probably give you problems with a glued down leather surface because of the expansion and contraction of the wood. I suggest Baltic birch plywood of perhaps MDF, and border it with cherry after you've glued down the leather. I was planning on doing a leather inlay writing surface on a walnut desk I'm building. My research steered me away, at least for the moment, because of the wood movement issue. I may build a second writing surface with BB ply bordered with walnut as I suggested and glue the leather to the BB ply - depends on whether I have enough energy left when I get done with the desk.
Hank
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Hank,
That's exactly what I was thinking of doing. Added advantage is that there would be no movement concerns with the top.
Cliff
‘The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence
Charles Bukowski
