04-07-2020, 10:47 AM
The boards have been planed on both sides and they are nice and smooth. It's the time to glue them. Since I've never glued eight-foot boards before, I thought it might be some good practice to start with a couple easy ones, just straight boards that will be in the middle of the benchtop. The ones on the front and the back of the bench will have the mortices in them, that the glue up will be a bit more complex.
Here's my equipment, two boards, glue, and a spreader:
The spreader worked very well, quick, and just a little extra glue:
and here's the forest of clamps to hold it all together. And to address Adam, I do squeeze the "the heck out of them":
The glue even cam through the knots!
As I mentioned in the original post, I want to avoid hand planing when I can. Since neither edge was very straight, I attached an aluminum extrusion I've been saving, to give me one straight edge. I ran that against the fence and ripped the opposite edge straight. Took the extrusion off and then ripped that edge. Here's what it looked like just before ripping:
After ripping the edges, the two-board laminate looks really nice, no gaps and no glue line visible:
The rest of the boards, excluding the ones on the front and back of the bench, were treated the same. The boards were glued by twos, edges ripped and then set aside to be glued into a benchtop.
I will try to post the glue up of the edge boards, the ones with the mortices, later today or tomorrow.
And thanks for watching!
Here's my equipment, two boards, glue, and a spreader:
The spreader worked very well, quick, and just a little extra glue:
and here's the forest of clamps to hold it all together. And to address Adam, I do squeeze the "the heck out of them":
The glue even cam through the knots!
As I mentioned in the original post, I want to avoid hand planing when I can. Since neither edge was very straight, I attached an aluminum extrusion I've been saving, to give me one straight edge. I ran that against the fence and ripped the opposite edge straight. Took the extrusion off and then ripped that edge. Here's what it looked like just before ripping:
After ripping the edges, the two-board laminate looks really nice, no gaps and no glue line visible:
The rest of the boards, excluding the ones on the front and back of the bench, were treated the same. The boards were glued by twos, edges ripped and then set aside to be glued into a benchtop.
I will try to post the glue up of the edge boards, the ones with the mortices, later today or tomorrow.
And thanks for watching!