Warped jarrah table tops

[matt]

I recently built 3 pieces of furniture out of Jarrah. A coffee table, corner table and sofa table, all with 2 dovetailed draws. They were finished with Danish oil and steel wool, beautiful! I was stoked with the finished product except for the tops. I bought a 4m length of pre laminated jarrah bench tops laminated by A.J. Lewis & Co, a timber merchant in Melbourne. The laminates are 28 x 45mm pieces of Jarrah.

The tops are attached with metal clips (don't know what they're called) where a groove is routed in the side of the work where one end of the clip sits and the other end is screwed into the bench tops, to allow for movement. Problem being the table tops are cupping, lifting on the outsides and getting worse.

How the hell can I fix this without splitting the laminates!!

[Chris Longworth]

Hi Matt.
I use these tops from time to time with kitchen renovations & here are a couple of things that caused most of the problems with laminated timber tops.
1) Did you seal & finish the laminated tops all round, including the underside? If not, this will help to cause the cupping.
2) Have you over tightened the screws to the metal brackets and or fixed the metal brackets to far into the groves so as not to allow the top to move with expansion & contraction.
Hope this is of some help Matt.
Chris.