Thread: Solid vs laminated F17?

Your bench will be 90 thick? -- which is the dimension recommended by Mr Schwarz
or will it be a thin one, only 40 thick?

Secondly, when placing the dog holes, Mr Schwarz recommends that they align with the wagon vise you plan to install and thus be close to the front edge of the bench.

I'm not sure how these two considerations align with the bench you are thinking of, but you could always replace the front two pieces of your bench with solid wood and use the glue-lam pieces for the rest of the bench.

If a benchtop is made of 90x45 batons glued up it is essentially laminated in any case. That said the wood should be seasoned and attention given to grain direction when doing the glueup. If the glue lam works out at a better price then no problem either. Some have made benchtops by gluing up strips of plywood even. As to dog holes they line up with the end vice dog or dogs as Ian said. There is no advantage in lining them with a seam that I can think of. Talking of round dogs here. Square dog holes need to be cut out before glueup. In fact the forces on a dog only needs to be enough to hold the work so not huge. Anyhow all the best with the build.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by Dusty Dave

Generally speaking, am I right in assuming that laminated (glue-lam, 2 pieces) hardwood is more dimensionally stable than a single piece?

one further thought ...

how is the grain aligned in the glue-lam "beams"
if it all goes the same direction then no problems,
however, if the grain in one half of the glue-lam faces down hill while that in the other half faces up hill, then flattening the bench could be an almost insurmountable issue.

Thanks for the replies. By way of background, I'd already bought some solid pieces, but my design evolved and I needed more. I can't get to that supplier right now (apparently there's a bug going round) and I only have access to the laminated stuff locally.

I checked out the laminated stuff and was really disappointed with the aesthetics - it was much rougher and uglier than I expected. I picked out the best couple of sticks anyway and will use it to supplement the solid.

On the subject of the bench, this isn't a 'traditional' woodworking bench by any stretch, but it's something I've had in mind for a while. I'll be incorporating 19mm round dogs on 100mm centres for versatility and so that I can make up jigs with 19mm dowel. And, to be honest, for the fun of figuring out how to drill them all.

I will post some pics and progress in the 'workbench' subforum if anyone is interested.

Perhaps a bit late as you've already purchased your stock, but am responding anyway for anyone searching in the future.

As Ian mentioned, the only issue I can foresee is one of not being able to align the grain of all the lengths.

If you are going to join them on the short edge, giving a 45 mm thick bench, then it's a bad idea as the laminations that I have seen more often than not appear to be of opposing grain directions.

If you're going to join them on the long edge, giving a 90 mm thick bench, make sure you can select your own pieces, as I have noticed that increasingly each half of the laminations themselves are made of shorter pieces finger jointed together. This again removes any guarantee of consistent grain direction.

With that in mind, the laminated lengths are generally cheaper too, so see no reason to not use them.

Originally Posted by Dusty Dave

.....
On the subject of the bench, this isn't a 'traditional' woodworking bench by any stretch, but it's something I've had in mind for a while. I'll be incorporating 19mm round dogs on 100mm centres for versatility and so that I can make up jigs with 19mm dowel. And, to be honest, for the fun of figuring out how to drill them all.....

Here's a starter. Some years ago I made an assembly bench with apron from 25mm MDF with 3/4 inch dog holes drilled on 4inch centres.

Assembly Table Apron.jpg


I used a sheet of common peg board as my template. They have holes on one inch centres and each hole is 3/16" in diameter. My technique was:

• With marking pen, link peg board holes at 4" centres - both horizontally and vertically. This created 4" grid for drilling.
• Securely clamped marked peg board to top of table.
• A 3/16" brad pointed bit was used as a centre punch to mark the centre of each dog hole through the peg board.
• Removed the peg board; the centre marks on 4" centres were clearly visible.
• With 3/4" forstner bit in drill press(*), very carefully align centre brad of bit in the mark and drill out dog hole.
• It is essential that all dog holes be absolutely vertical and desirable that the lines be as straight as possible. Mine are good.

If I was doing it again then I would get a local cabinet maker to supply, cut and drill the MDF on his CNC router table.

(*At the time I had a really cheap drill press and was able to remove its table and drill between its splayed feet.)

Thanks guys. My experience with the wood is that yes, it is largely made up of smaller pieces finger jointed. There was no difference in price, the first supplier had a mix of solid and laminated stock (with more laminated in the longer lengths). The second supplier only had laminated. I was really disappointed in the finish, there were multiple 'misaligned' pieces (whole finger jointed sections a mm or two shy of the full dimension) and still plenty of splits and shakes to be found.

FWIW my design won't be laminating the boards into a solid top, it'll be a ladder-like grid of the hardwood over a plywood 'tray'.

Originally Posted by Dusty Dave

...
FWIW my design won't be laminating the boards into a solid top, it'll be a ladder-like grid of the hardwood over a plywood 'tray'.

I am having trouble visualising this, Dave, and wondering how the stresses will run.

Do you have a preliminary drawing?

Sorry Graeme, I was working on this and it took longer than expected to respond to your message.

It's probably not clear from the pic, but the hardwood elements (rails?) will be 'T' shaped, so plenty of places to clamp things. I'll also make a couple of spare blocks of the same height for when I need extra support. The saws will share a fence line, and have their bed heights level with the rails. I can just relocate them if I need more space for a job. The holes are mostly there for fun, and to try out the idea that having a hole is more useful than not having a hole.

The left end of the bench is towards the door, and I'm planning a telescopic RHS with a couple of rollers on it to act as an infeed. I have 6m of timber storage under the bench, so pulling a length out and placing it on the bench for docking is super easy.

(The disembodied pole is the rail for my TS's sliding table).

Bench.jpg

rail.jpg

Originally Posted by Dusty Dave

It's probably not clear from the pic, but the hardwood elements (rails?) will be 'T' shaped, so plenty of places to clamp things. I'll also make a couple of spare blocks of the same height for when I need extra support. The saws will share a fence line, and have their bed heights level with the rails. I can just relocate them if I need more space for a job. The holes are mostly there for fun, and to try out the idea that having a hole is more useful than not having a hole.


rail.jpg

Just a comment Dave
I see from your SketchUp drawing that the holes in the T-shaped rails are spaced 100 mm apart.
I know you say the holes are mainly there for fun, but changing the "pitch" to 96 mm (= 3 x 32 mm) might be a better choice. I believe that sticking to a multiple of the standard 32 mm spacing will be a better long term choice than going for another measurement.

Originally Posted by ian

Just a comment Dave
I see from your SketchUp drawing that the holes in the T-shaped rails are spaced 100 mm apart.
I know you say the holes are mainly there for fun, but changing the "pitch" to 96 mm (= 3 x 32 mm) might be a better choice. I believe that sticking to a multiple of the standard 32 mm spacing will be a better long term choice than going for another measurement.

Could you elaborate on this, please, Ian. What is the advantage of the 32mm spacing? I was unaware of such a "standard".

When I made my assembly bench I intended to put the holes on 100mm centres, but finished up spacing them on 4 inch centres - 101.6mm - because that is the spacing on pegboard. After 10+ years I really have not noticed the difference.

Graeme
1.25" is only 0.25 mm less than the Euro standard of 32 mm.
The North Americans typically build cabinets using face frame construction, while the Europeans don't use face frames and use the 32 mm system.
Most (it might be all) cabinet hardware -- knobs, pulls, slides, hinges, etc -- use the standard 32 mm system. The exceptions would be antique hardware.
The Canadian Lee Valley company sells a 32 mm system jig for installing 32 mm standard hardware, including shelf supports, in North America. To be fair, Lee Valley also sells a drilling system for placing holes at 25.4 mm centers.


96 mm is 3 x 32 mm and is the spacing used for the Festool MFT.


I'd be interested in knowing if new peg board from Bunnings or Mitre10 has holes at 4" centers, 100 mm centers or 96 mm.


in terms of using pegboard to space holes for an assembly bench, provided the holes are square to the bench surface and spaced on a square grid, I doubt if you would notice the difference, but should you be swapping components with other makers ....

Thanks, Ian

I was aware that Blum, Hettich et al used the 32mm module, but couldn't see a lot of relevance on a bench top. Little of my work follows any module!

Bunnings website says that the pegboard holes are on 25mm centres, but I do not have much faith in their numbers. Been caught too many times with stuff marked with metric sizes but which is actually imperial.

Interesting, that was the first I'd heard of any 32mm standard, so I did some googling. Looks like it all stems from (pre-existing) 32mm gears being the best option for the line boring machines producing cheap modular furniture in Europe after WW2.

To be honest I'm still leaning towards 100mm, but it got me thinking about things like predrilled slotted steel angle - I might look into what standards (if any) are common there, as that could prove handy for jigs and other structures. So thanks for raising the point!