Joining sections of a butcher block?

Re: Joining sections of a butcher block?

Barry Irby

Garth, I mentioned this before in one of my replies.

What I would do is glue pieces together until I had a piece 12" wide (to fit through the planer) then leave the glue out of one joint and continue until it was 24" wide then ski another glue joint and continue until it was 36" wide.

The problem is that as you glue up the first piece, it may not be perfectly straight. If you just start over and glue up a second and third piece, each of them may not be perfectly straight either. Then when you try to glue the pieces together, you will have a bad joint. If you glue them up as a unit they will fit well, even if they are not perfectly straight, they will match. Be sure to keep the pieces in order, run them through the planer and then glue up the top. Your dowel jig may be your friend.

Once you get the second piece about half way, you can probably lay the first piece aside and add to the second piece until you get it wide enough and start on the third piece. This idea has risk. You could damage the mating edge with the clamps. You could get confused and glue up to the wrong edge. and You might "warp" the Piece so that it would no longer mate up with the first piece.

If you also had a jointer or skills with hand planes, you could joint the individual pieces to make them fit nicely, but I gather you don't.

If you glue this up in three or four pieces to get the overall width you need you will only have two or three joints to sand into submission.

PS...

Barry Irby

If you don't want to buy a planer, I can think of four or five different way to smooth out that top with other tools. Floor sander, hand held power plane, router, and portable circular saw (skilsaw) all come to mind.

On Youtube you can find videos of people leveling Live Edge table tops.

Re: Joining sections of a butcher block?

Garth

Thanks.

Sorry I didn’t see that idea the first time. Having 3 pieces that don’t fit together was my big fear with doing it in sections. I’m already set up to glue one big piece so I’ll definitely just leave glue out of a couple parts.

I found a planer I can rent for cheap and a friend of a friend might have one that works for beer so even better

I still like the idea of doing it by hand but now (living with a plywood top) is not the time to develop that skill. I tied a bit with a shorter cheap hand plane I have - it’s definitely a skill.

Re: Joining sections of a butcher block?

Barry Irby

Garth, Hand planes are definitely an acquired skill. I have not learned it yet. I think it starts with sharpening and setting up the plane. Much more to it than meets the eye.

I made another suggestion that you may not have picked up on. If you pieces have really do have grooves in the back that are a cove or groove that is half of a 3/16" dowel, you could mate them together and use short pieces of dowel as keys to align the pieces. Just lay them in the groove with glue and slap the pieces together. And the dowels will fill the holes at the ends. Be very careful checking this to make sure the dowels do not hold the faces of the pieces apart. If the dowels are a tiny bit loose it would be fine. Then you could add two pieces at a time to your stock and only have to keep one joint in registration. You could use your dowel jig to register the flat faces. Even if you only use your dowel jig once on each piece at the center it will help. Using c-clamps at the ends is easy.

Keep in mind, this is a big project and not easy. Plan your setup and put some effort into getting ready. Have a flat place to work and maybe a glue roller and room for your clamps. have your clean-up tools ready. Lift the squeeze out off when it gets leathery.

Re: Joining sections of a butcher block?

Joseph Mulherin

Garth, go and see the above picture of the panel clamp.....and go to Shopsmith.com to see the price of their panel clamp......which I believe might work for you.

Re: Joining sections of a butcher block?

Joseph Mulherin

Addendum: make up a panel about 8" wide with a slot for your router bit to go thru and lay it atop your board and run the router to level the entire top in sections.....then sand as needed.

Panel is 1" boards on each long edge and slot is about 2-3" wide, panel length is about 24" which is clamped to your boards to be finished using the router. It does work and gives a level top all over.