Reply To: Laminating a dining table top
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So you want to make your boards longer, endgrain to endgrain?
If you are concerned about stability (heavy meals or screwing in light bulbs on the lamp above), you can do groves and toungues. You can also increase the size of the glueing faces by making skewed cuts (i.e. upper end shorter than lower end or vice versa). I would even consider hide glue, because you can use a thin mixture to saturate the endgrain before actually glueing the faces together. The final glueing will soften the glue in the endgrain and you end up with a large glue structure. Aternatively, use epoxy that takes long to dry, so it can form a similar structure inside the wood.
But this is just theoretical thinking, I haven’t learned this and I haven’t made actual comparisions on real joints.
This, I got from woodworking videos: If your wood is very dry, consider storing it in an area with a humidity similar to your dining room. The dryer the wood, the better it absorbs moisture, and even the tiniest crack in the finish will allow moisture to get it. It usually never gets out again. So, I would even consider not to seal the wood completely.
And finally, moisture, shrinkage and expansion are very complex subjects. There is a lot to learn about how the effects of moisture can be mastered.
Dieter