Breadboard ends

Re: Breadboard ends

Hank Knight

Joe,

Your method sounds like the way I've done it in the past. The only suggestion I would make is to use a good, sharp crosscut blade for the initial shoulder cut for your tenons. You want a nice, clean cut for the shoulder and sometimes a dado will leave the shoulder a little ragged - depending on your blade, of course. Make the shoulder cut first then waste out the rest of the tenon with your dado. I leave the tenon a little fat and sneak up on the fit with a shoulder plane or a skewed block plane.

Hank

Re: Breadboard ends

John McGaw

"I will use a dado set to put a groove in the end caps"

Does that mean that the groove will go all the way? Difficult to do a stopped groove using a dado set and the only way I've ever seen it done was stopped. I have done it with a spiral upcut bit on the router table and that works pretty well.

All I can say is that, if you are set on using breadboard ends, make sure that the chosen wood is dead stable. The last time I did this style was on a little square kitchen table 32" wide. Trouble is that it is made of quartersawn (American) sycamore which despite the cut is very 'lively' and only time the length of the ends matched the width of the table was the evening it was finished -- every time since then the ends have either been too long or too short and the result is quite unsatisfying. From now on I'll stick with a nice hidden cleat to keep things straight when it seems appropriate.

Re: Breadboard ends

Don Stephan

Because no finish is impervious to the movement of moisture in the air, and because all solid woods expand and contract with changes in ambient humidity, unless the piece is in a tightly controlled environment for constant humidity there will almost always be offsets. That's the nature of cross grain.

Re: Breadboard ends

Jesse Cloud

Probably not traditional (which I never cared about anyhow), but I cut the groove in the table top with a router with a slot bit, using some sacrificial pieces at the beginning and end to avoid blowout. Then the tongue can be cut into the cap ends easily with either a router table or a tablesaw.

Floating tenons make things easier, a snap if you have a domino.

If you are applying a film finish, after the finish has been applied and dried a bit take a razor blade and score along the joints between the top and the caps. If you don't do this (and I didn't the first time I made them), the first time the top moves, it will break the finish at that joint, but in an ugly ragged fashion.

There's no silver bullet for the disparity between the widths of the top and the caps, but Greene and Greene softened it by making the tongue longer than the top by a wee bit and shaping the end in a graceful curve. Google Greene and Greene breadboard.

Hope you will show lots of pictures!!

Re: Breadboard ends

AZ in Colorado Springs

You mentioned the alignment of the breadboard ends. Funny thing happened last month.

In 2010 I made a blanket chest for my daughter. I live in Colorado where the humidity is arid. She lives in Virginia, a few miles from the ocean. The air there can be soggy.

I was at her home last month and I felt for the alignment of the breadboard ends. Perfectly flush! Go figure.

Re: Breadboard ends

Jack Guzman from Maine

I agree with this. I made my wife a wide pine trestle table and incorporated breadboard ends. I made the ends slightly long on purpose. Figured they would not stay even so I might as well accent this fact.

Of course I used hand tool methods to form them but that discussion is for another forum.---Jack

Re: Breadboard ends

John McGaw

Oh, I understand very well what is going on and that is why I emphasized using a stable wood. Some woods, like my American sycamore, move quite a bit with seasonal changes and there is nothing that can be done about it. Well, nothing short of putting the whole thing through the plasticizing stabilizing process used on knife scales and such.

Not a stopped groove. Wood is Cherry.

Re: Breadboard ends

Ellis Walentine

Hmm, that says to me that the EMC of the top when you made it is the same as the EMC in its new home in Virginia. Could that have been the case?

Ellis

Re: Breadboard ends

AZ in Colorado Springs

Hi Ellis

Well, it was spring time in Virginia, so the humidity level was comfortable. But it's always pretty dry out here in Colorado.

That's the only set of breadboard ends I've made. Maybe I cut them a little bit long thinking the top would catch up to them after the piece was delivered?

I'd have to dig through my box of completed projects to look at my notes. And I'm not sure I would have noted doing that. IIRC I pinned the breadboard ends tight at the front so the movement would be seen or felt at the back of the chest.

Re: Bang!

TomD

If you want to have breadboards that don't show a nasty shift at the ends of the breadboards with moves or seasons. Make basically the joint described, but tenon edges of the table as though you were building a frame and panel. Then you can leave a purposeful crack down the center, or do a diagonal so you can't see light, or emphasize a natural edge, whatever it takes so the load of the moisture change is not shown in the panel. You glue only the tenons.

The reverse is a middle tenon or so, and glue the tenons only.but then you get offsets.

Excaliber owner from Toronto where he had at one point a high end tool store that sold waterstones and Japanese hand tools that he imported. These were displayed on beautiful substantial trestle tables with glued breadboards ends. They all had huge cracks down the middle of them, that followed the grain. We are talking tables maybe @ 7' long, 36" wide and 1.5 inches thick, in cherry. He said that one night while burning the midnight oil, he heard a terrific "crack" like a gunshot. It was the first table "letting go". He had at least 6 of these tables, and one after the other, they all eventually tripped the breaker.

Re: Breadboard ends

Ellis Walentine

It's easy enough for your table top wood to be, say, 12% or so if it's air-dried or otherwise acclimated. It's hard to fool mother nature.