Thread: Joining two large acacia wood panels together?

Oiling? Oils are commonly glue repellant!

Once the adjacent edges are jointed and trued up, I'd mark and drill for hardwood dowel pegs every 15cm or so.
Do a dry fit and if that's OK, do the glue-up and walk away.

My bench is cheap 2' x 6" spruce/pine/fir 25mm.
Comes out of the drying kiln at about 30% MC so there's lots of shrinkage.
5 yrs after that, I've filled all the cracks with RTV bathtub silicone. Love it because I don't care.
What's a few more holes for eye-bolts to strap down carvings?

Acacia for a benchtop???

I also wonder if 26mm is really thick enough for using dogs.

Yes artme, that's the reason I wanted to join both panels together on top of one another. It should come to 52mm which I think should be okay for the light work I'm planning on doing

You plan to laminate those slabs to each other? Waste the looks of 2 sides? How freakin' big are they?
Why can't you glue/laminate them both to some crap-wood base to show off the acacia?
What's the goal? Pretty bench or gorgeous woodworking that comes off the bench?

Gotcha WL!!

Robson is right.Use just one panel and keep the other for a better use.

Originally Posted by woodlogic

Hi all,

I've recently endeavoured on making a workbench by hand. For the top I want to use two large (l:2200 x w:600 x h:26mm) acacia wood panel slabs I purchased from Bunning's.

What are some necessary steps I need to take to join the panels together? On the package it mentioned the need to oil it well before fitting. Should I oil it prior to gluing & screwing the panels together or after?

Many thanks,
Raymond.

The way many would do it is about every 100mm drill a hole through the sheet that will be the bottom piece then on the side that will contact the top piece counter sink the holes you have drilled --the top sheet can then be marked through the holes in the bottom sheet lightly dill holes in this sheet (about half way through) and counter sink these holes-- drilling and counter sinking the holes let the waste build up when you put in the screws pack in the counter sinks and not push the wood up -- coat the bottom of the top piece with you choosen glue etc and fit the pieces togeather and put in you screws. Make the holes you drill for the screws slightly smaller than the screws. Remove the screws after the glue drys allow at least 24 hours. Do not oil the glue sides.

Acacia sounds like a precious timber. How come Bunnings sell expensive timber? Always think Bunnings sell cheap stuff

Every once in a while, they must screw up. That's normal. You need to be in the right place at the right time.

Up here, Home Depot brings in clear 4 x 4 x 96" western red cedar fence posts.
Upwards of 40 rings/inch = fantastic carving wood.
I got lucky and was 10 minutes ahead of a carload of carvers (we talked wood as I was doing the check out.)
Off they ran to see what they could find.

I've learned that if I walk in and explain what sort of WRC I need, the staff are more than willing to help me search.
"Yeah. We just broke open a new lift of WRC posts from the (Vancouver) Island mill.
Let's pick through that."

Sounds to me these are veneered sheets the OP is talking about - I can't imagine getting solid wood panels of that dimension in any Bunnies round these parts, & certainly not for anything less than a king's ransom! So no need to panic, the Acaia is soon going to be missing in action on the bench surface (or much of it will be...)

Cheers,

Just curious as to why you would want to dowel boards together??

I have a couple of benches i use, one for shop. but there is a cheap one i use to take on-site.
Basically i bought a pile of 4 x 2 clear pine dressed them all till they were square then glued them all together. Its not light but the plank came in at
2.450m long and 525mm wide and Nom 73mm thick. I take it with me to do a little site work every now and then. Its really solid and dead flat.
Maybe once every 4 months i either run it through my thicknesser. or get the winding sticks out and plane it flat.
But to clamp to it, or chisel work or whatever... to have something like this on-site is awesome. In materials it cost me less than $100.00
That was pine at $2.75/m for 4 x 2's and glue. as the gluing was so much i used a roller to get it all done in one hit clamped all up..
I then let it sir for a couple of weeks then ran the disc sander over it to get the dry glue off....then through the thicknesser...hand planed it smotth...2 thined coats of Linseed and
Tung oil. The weight is the issue...it came in at roughly 60 kg so its not light to carry out of your vehicle or whatever then dump it on trestles but for me i'm happy enough.
To my surprise the pine has stayed extremely stable over a period of 3 years.

I saw those panels a while ago, they are laminated thin strips of timber much like beech or hoop pine laminated panels. Don't look like an Australian product, definitely budget so wouldn't be too worried about glueing two together. Wouldn't make a bad benchtop but some of it is very dark.

sinjin: the stability is contributed by the glue-up with no predominant grain direction.
I do envy your efforts and workmanship to make such a bench top.
Up here, I can buy flat book shelving material, probably pine, 30 cm wide, about 18mm I suppose.
Must be at least a dozen skinny strips of wood in it. I recall that 45cm is as wide as they make it.
Knots galore, quite interesting to look at.