25' Maple Counter Top - in 3 Parts

[RMDavis]

Hi -

Building a 25' long maple counter top, which for physical reasons, must be broken up into less than 10' parts.

Is it event reasonable attempt to "finger joint" these sections use the staggered maple strips or are we stuck with a straight across seam?

TIA
Ross

 

[rizzoa13]

Are you building it out of shorter pieces all glued together or out of 10' pieces of maple? The idea of weaving them together to hide the seams could work it'd just be a lot of work. Also if concern is how you'll clamp the pieces together while the glue sets up. You'd need something like a countertop steamer used for solid surface work.

 

[RMDavis]

Out of shorter pieces  2' to 4' as we may by shorts a bit cheaper...

 

[sigmatango]

Might it be possible to prepare the parts in shop, then assemble, sand and finish onsite?http://www.newwoodworker.com/glulinbits.html for your long and butt joints. You could joint, plane, rout and sand everything in the shop, then assemble and glueup onsite, sand and finish onsite... Call me crazy, but it might work...

 

[nickao]

What style?

If this is the look you can glue them up in parts leaving the ends staggered and ready to accept each other and complete it on site. Just test it all in the shop and don't use glue for the seam areas. A top like this is going to hide the connecting points well. Just fit it together like a jigsaw puzzle. Then sand it, no need to worry about flush at the joints, just tight left to right. I would make 2-8 foot section and 1-9 foot. Make as few parts as you can.

[attachimg=1]

Expect to pay about 2000.00 for someone to make the 3 parts for you(30" wide by about 25 foot long), then you would only need glue them on site. They might charge a few buck more to allow for the finger joint puzzle connections as described. Doing it yourself I see about 550.00 in natural grade maple material  that is mix matched as shown. If you can do better than that you are doing great on material(just the wood) cost.

And make 100% sure you are using 100% Hard Maple and not mixed. Some off the cheaper maples are soft, some of the most gorgeous Maple are also very soft, nice for a guitar or inlay, not so much for a table top or counter.  If you can mark that  Maple with your fingernail as hard as you can press, don't use it for a counter top. You can't indent Hard Maple with that type pressure.

 

[Kodi Crescent]

This type of treatment have been described above...for whatever reason this sounded similar to building model railroad spline roadbed.  There may be better articles than this, but this was the first I could find.
http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/howto/splines/index.shtml