Breadboard ends mishap
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Hi everyone. I seem to have made a crucial mistake connecting the breadboard ends to my coffee table top dimensions 100x60cm, about 4cm thick.
Everything seemed to flow smoothly: the breadboard ends fit nice and flush with the shoulders, everything came in nice and tight (but not too tight), I glued only a portion of the middle tenon and the middle dowel (three tenons per side), the rest was dry fitted and pegged.
Upon waking this morning I realized my mistake; I forgot to elongate the tenon holes for the dowels to allow for wood movement!!This is eating me up now. I don’t know what to expect in the long run. Will this completely ruin my tabletop? How bad can I expect things to get? It’s winter now so I suppose the table top will expand in the summer.
I would hate to have to remove the breadboard ends now, since I worked on them a long time and they fit really nice. I was thinking of just leaving it and hoping for the best, praying that things don’t crack or come apart.
What do you guys think will happen and what would you do?
25 March 2015 at 8:07 am #125883I did the same once and nothing happpened, I live in aa tropical humid environment. Summers are ridiculously hot and winters (night time only) are cold and nothing happened.
26 March 2015 at 9:08 pm #125948Robert, this all depends on how big the top is. For a coffee table, I’m guessing about 18 inches (450 mm)? When the wood expands, the dowels will be able to move a tiny bit whereas if the tenons were glued, they would not move at all.
Another consideration is whether or not the boards used for the top (not the breadboard ends) were quartersawn. Quartersawn wood is a lot more stable than flat sawn and should not expand and contract nearly as much. My guess is that you would have no problem with q-sawn wood.
In either case, please update us in 6 months to let us know how it turns out.
It’s just good to know that someone else wakes up in the middle of the night thinking about what mistakes they made on their projects..LOL I would think there is a good possibility that you won’t have any problems. But I do hope you will share if you do. That might help me make the decision to rebuild my top if I make the same mistake. Good Luck
Matt,
The table top is 100cm long and 60cm wide which is approximately 40 by 24 inches.To be honest, I’m not sure if the wood is quartersawn. I think it is but I have no way of knowing since the bb ends covered up the endgrain. The pattern of the boards (three boards jointed, 20cm wide each, maple-oak-maple) seem straight enough to point that they are quartersawn. I can’t be sure about this, though.
I was desperate enough to send an email to Mr. Seller’s and he was kind enough to take time out of his busy day and provide an answer in regards to this topic, for which I am extremely grateful. He said … “The likelihood is all will be just fine”, and to watch the bb ends for noticeable movement…
Sandy,
usually when I lay my head to sleep, and when I awake, I am certainly thinking about what I have done and what I need to do for my current, upcoming as well as past projects.. It’s good to know I’m not the only one going to bed and thinking about woodworking and waking up at 5 am and not being able to go back to sleep because of woodworking thoughts going through my head.It’s weird, but sometimes I feel my daytime desk job is only interfering with my woodworking activities..
If Paul’s reply is sufficiently reassuring, then great. Otherwise, how about just knocking out the dowels from the outside tenons and replacing them with a shallow plug (glued just into the breadboard but not into the tenon)?
I’ve built a couple of tables in which I didn’t peg the outside tenons at all, and the breadboards have never moved.
23 June 2015 at 11:56 pm #127977It looks great, some very dramatic patterns in the lighter wood (is it maple?).
Ever have any trouble with the fixed tenons?
Matt
Thanks guys. No, I didn’t have any problems so far, but there hasn’t been much significant movement yet. The wood has a very low moisture content and is indoors so hopefully there won’t be much change. Yes, it’s maple, oak maple for the top and oak for the legs and apron.
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