Art Room Cabinetry- Part II

The last piece of the puzzle is the top work surface, and it is what is giving me the most trouble. The customer wanted a solid wood top and loved the look of a few of the walnut samples that I showed them.  I purchased and milled the lumber to make a countertop that is 13’ in length and between 20-30” wide (the cabinets step out in the middle)

I have decided to tongue and groove the ends of the boards to create a countertop that is roughly 13’ long, and will just use biscuits and glue for the long joints for alignment.  It will be rather well supported over the whole length, so I am not too worried about strength.  Plus there is a lot of long grain glue surface to help with strength.

These are the boards for the middle step out span.  They will total 10” deep and will be attached to the main span later. You can see how I made the tongue and groove joint that was used for the end to end joints to provide strength. 

This was done with a Tongue and Groove set on my router.  It was nice to only have to set up once and do all the boards and since it was a matched set, the joint fit very tight the first try.  

Once I started gluing up, I realized that tight joints need clamps to stay tight and I had to loosen them a bit with a rabbeted hand plane to make the assembly easier.

It is called a rabbeting hand plane because the blade goes all the way to the edge of the body of the hand plane.  this allows me to get a cut on the wood all the way into the corner of the tongue to take a very small amount off the entire thickness of the board's width.

This is the final product, any remaining misalignment will be taken down when sanding... and there will be a lot of sanding... 

*don't mind the gaps and chips on the side, this will all be hidden when it is fully finished!*

Here you can see the final glue-up.  I used the pipe clamps where there was an overlap of boards to ensure that all 3 were tight to the others.  I took a lot of time to ensure that the edges of the boards were as straight as possible to help with the gluing steps.  If there was any deviation from perfectly straight it would not only induce gaps in the joint, but it would make the joints between other boards appear.

There is great grain pattern and figure in these boards.  I was never going to be able to fully match all of the boards without way overshooting on the cost of the materials, so I went with a nice blend of dark heartwood, lighter sapwood and some medium toned heartwood.  The overall effect will be very nice.

A few of the boards even have some very pretty and highly desirable ribbon figure that will pop when the boards are finished.

When it comes to gluing walnut, I try to make my life easy and use the dark wood glue from Titebond.  It is waterproof* (resistant), very strong and when it dries it is right about the color of walnut.

You can never have too many clamps.

I am in the middle of the glue-up for the larger 148" section of the top.  I will post again when it is close to complete.