gluing boards to make thicker stock
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23 January 2015 at 8:14 pm #123820
I’d like to have a go at making a table and I can get some oak planks 1 inch thick for a good price.
My question is, can I glue boards together to make thicker stock for legs? Or can it cause problems?Kind regards
James, from a structural point of view I doubt it’s going to be a problem. Laminated construction materials are in use everywhere. The issue you might have to contend with is visual, unsightly glue lines along the length of the legs. However, if you take special care and attention to detail matching the boards up with both color and grain orientation, you should be able to make the glue lines almost dissappear.
24 January 2015 at 1:02 am #123838On some of the Arts and Crafts style furniture the legs were laminated so it showed face grain on all sides. However that may more than you want to do.
I’ve laminated 3/4 inch pine to make table legs because I didn’t have access to thicker stock. It wasn’t really noticeable once they were stained and finished.
24 January 2015 at 9:09 pm #123848Thanks for the replies, I’ll give it a go. I feel a lot more confident than I did a few months ago having done a few successful edge joints now.
I asked this question once regarding legs for a coffee table in cherry. Paul’s reply was it might look like one didn’t care. If I invest a lot of hours to make a nice piece of furniture, it would be a waste not to go the extra mile to do it really well. For a utilitarian piece, no problem, but for a fine piece… well, you have to decide for yourself.
David
26 January 2015 at 10:20 pm #123931For narrower legs, you could try to hide the joint by gluing it up such the the join runs diagonally, i.e. from cross-sectional corner to corner. With 1in boards this would restrict you to legs with less than a 2in diagonal.
They would also have to remain straight, any taper cut would cause the glue line to leave the corner and trail into the tapered face.
I would just get some thicker stock, if you’re not building enormous legs it needn’t be that expensive. Less than £10 probably for four legs under 2in square.
Matt
27 January 2015 at 7:00 pm #123950@davidr I can see what you mean about it might look as if you didn’t care.
@chemical_cake I can’t see how having the joint diagonally would help ( my brain started to hurt trying to work it out 🙂 ), wouldn’t I still be restricted to a 1 inch thickness? It would be best to get thicker stock, I’m just struggling to find anything thicker than 1 inch in oak without having to pay for postage and without leaving myself skint.28 January 2015 at 10:54 pm #124042I was reminded of this table I’d seen in a book with laminated legs. It was made around 1910, before modern glues, and the joint is still strong (assuming it hasn’t had any restoration work). So it can be done, has been done for a long time, and doesn’t appear to cause any problems.
On this table, the matching of the grain shows little care and I think it spoils it. On a coffee table there is no back side to the legs really, all the faces are on display, so you would have match grain on every face and that could be a real struggle.
The other photo shows what I mean by a diagonal glue up. You could get a little under 1 1/2″ square legs this way.
Attachments:
You must be logged in to view attached files.There’s another way you could try, laminate the boards as you were thinking of but make the final size a little bit smaller. Then get a some pieces and mitre them around the whole leg so you don’t see the glue lines on the inside. The outside pieces can be very thin, veneer like almost.
Sort of like how Paul is doing in the current Joiners toolbox project theres the mitred section on the bottom of the box that he put on.
29 January 2015 at 12:30 am #124052Here’s a thread from lumberjocks that may help.
http://lumberjocks.com/topics/54856
30 January 2015 at 10:49 am #124098Thank you, that photo certainly does show up the poorly matched grain, something i’ll have to be careful of if I go that route, I can see how diagonal jointing would eliminate any mismatched grain and by using the central core I could go as thick as a board is wide which is plenty.
Thank you all for your help and advice, it’s given me plenty to go at. -
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