What would be your choice

Rob Keeble

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GTA Ontario Canada
At the stage where i now need to make my strips of cherry for my table.

Can do it on table saw but....

Can do it on bandsaw..

Strips to be cut come from pieces of scrap cherry all milled up to around 2 inch wide, approx 3/4 thick and various lengths from 18" through to several feet.

Normally when we think of "strips" one would be thinking in terms of cutting strips off the 3/4" face.

I want mine off the 2" wide face and about 3/16 or a tad more thick.

My thought is to resaw on bandsaw given saw blade thickness will consume around 1/8" of wood for each cut from my approx 3/4 thickness.

Also even using a strip cutting jig on table saw leaves very little thickness of wood to pass between fence and blade.

What would be your choice and why, any other suggestions for cutting them?

Thinking of making a clean up pass on my planner after each rip cut on bandsaw so one side of strip is definitely flat but that could be a enormous time consumer given need to secure wood on some base for planning given how thin it would be getting after each resaw of a strip, so that may go by the wayside.

Comments and suggestions welcome, I am trying to think this one through without the usual "act in haste and repenting at my leisure" (my Dads favorite advise) lol.

Thanks.
 
Alarm bells go off in my head here. You want 3/16" face slices for your table top which is to live outdoors (as I recall). Whole different grain orientation. Outdoor applications always introduce a lot of wood movement with the wide temperature swings on a daily basis. Wood moves most across face grain.

I am thinking two things here. One, the glue will not be able to sustain the extreme movements and the whole thing will de-laminate. Second, water is not your only concern, sun also is. Nailing will also cause the de-laminated strips to split.

So what to do. Generally speaking for myself, I would go with strips laminated face to face (butcher block or workbench, fashion) exposing edge grain instead and as a solid wood top, no substrate. Wood movement is minimized and the threat of delamination is dramatically reduced.

Methinks you are cooking a recipe for disaster.

Won't find that on Google either. :D
 
Carol's right about the outdoor exposure, and the wood movement/glue failure.

As for cutting the strips, I'd definitely use the bandsaw. A ½" or ¾" blade with 3 or 4 tpi (6 ~8 mm pitch) will work well. A drum sander will easily clean up the saw marks.
 
Alarm bells go off in my head here. You want 3/16" face slices for your table top which is to live outdoors (as I recall). Whole different grain orientation. Outdoor applications always introduce a lot of wood movement with the wide temperature swings on a daily basis. Wood moves most across face grain.

I am thinking two things here. One, the glue will not be able to sustain the extreme movements and the whole thing will de-laminate. Second, water is not your only concern, sun also is. Nailing will also cause the de-laminated strips to split.

So what to do. Generally speaking for myself, I would go with strips laminated face to face (butcher block or workbench, fashion) exposing edge grain instead and as a solid wood top, no substrate. Wood movement is minimized and the threat of delamination is dramatically reduced.

Methinks you are cooking a recipe for disaster.

Won't find that on Google either. :D
Carol you so right its just not funny. More i think about it more this project is a disaster waiting to happen.
Thanks for the wake up. Should have caught the wood movement thing myself, not as if i did not know it but was so focused on getting it done i never thought of the issue. Now it makes more sense why the original idea used narrow strips also it was for indoors.

I will have to rethink. Not keen on the end grain solution as part of the attraction for me was having some grain show hence my choice to wider strips.

Add to all this the base this top would go on is anything but a masterpiece itself.

Add to this the substrate issue was bothering me. Going all the way back to printed circuit board design and the issue of expansion contraction of components versus substrate they soldered to causing joint reliability issues over time.

Thanks a ton for the wake up. Have to rethink.

On the plus side, lol i now have a load of milled cherry scraps.
 
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Not keen on the end grain solution as part of the attraction for me was having some grain show hence my choice to wider strips.

Three kinds of grain, Rob. Face grain, edge grain, and end grain. My suggestion would expose edge grain which can be quite attractive. End grain surface may have its place, but it is not a practical surface. It exposes the open cells of the wood to all sorts of things that can soak in. That's why end grain stains darker than face or edge grain. More holes for the color to go.

You wanted an outdoor table using scraps of what you already had on had. Sometimes that marriage is doomed to failure.

My condolences. :dunno:
 
One of my rules for veneer is that it should be less than 1/8 inch thick, preferably much less than 1/8 inch. The goal is to glue it so solidly to the substrate that the veneer just has to go along with the substrate, and is not strong enough to have an impact on the side expansion (what it does expand become a microscopic increase in thickness). if you want a "solid" rather than veneer top, either glue it to the same species with the same grain orientation, or just make a top that is not glued down. (I sometimes use premium wood for the front of a drawer, perhaps 3/8 inch thick, laminated to a 3/8 inch thick drawer front of the same material but less premium piece such as with some sapwood. Since the species and grain align, I expect the expansion to match.)

I have visited lots of museums especially in Europe (where you can get really close) and seen lots of 100+ year old handsawn 5 mm veneer delaminated from the substrate, and just hanging loose on, for example, the side of a chest of drawers.

But to answer your question, it depends on how good your bandsaw is. With my 14 inch bandsaw, each veneer has to be planed, so I would consider the table saw for a smoother finish with less planing. With my 24 inch bandsaw and a superb super high tension carbide blade, I can usually get at least 6 layers (veneers) out of a 3/4" thick board - the sawn surface is not ready to finish, but is smooth enough to glue down, with the other side sanded after the glue dries. If I am having a bad day, I may have to joint the surface after 3-4 veneers have been cut
 
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