Laminating Oak Floorboards For Table Top?

[bobfog]

I have found some lovely oak floorboards going for a song in a reclamation yard, they're just under 7ft x 1" thick. Wondering what people's thoughts are on laminating them together to make a table top of just under 2" thick?

Thoughts on movement, stability etc?

Thanks
Bob.

 

[peter halle]

Should be doable.  But thinking out loud you might be able to get - depending on the design of the table - the same effect by using the thinner boards for the field of the table and then have the double laminations only where they matter at the edges and ends.  Just a thought.

Peter

 

[bobfog]

Should be doable.  But thinking out loud you might be able to get - depending on the design of the table - the same effect by using the thinner boards for the field of the table and then have the double laminations only where they matter at the edges and ends.  Just a thought.

Peter

Thanks Peter. Yeah the same idea has crossed my mind also.

 

[rmwarren]

Bob,

I did that with some cheap Jatoba flooring for a worksurface top and it worked great. Cut off all the tongue & groove, used dominos to join end-to end (lots of short pieces) then jointed the edges and dominoed together.

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It's about due for another coat of Osmo. As Peter suggested mine is only 3/4 thick except at the edges.

RMW

 

[HarveyWildes]

I planed down about 300 feet of 3" walnut flooring from 3/4" think to slightly less than 5/8.  Flooring accumulates grit over time.  I've got a planer with a helical cutter head with the little carbide blades, and it was hard on them, but not to the point of rotating them yet.  If you have HS blades, plan on sharpening them when you're done.

Also remember to scan for metal.  The boards I was planning had aluminum brads, and I did plane 2-3 of them despite my best efforts to root them out.  They did not make a dent in the carbide that I could see or feel, but they might in an HS blade.

I'd laminate them in whatever way made the wood look best, if you care about looks.

Richard, that's a lot of Dominos!

 

[bobfog]

Thanks for the replies.

Do you think I can leave them as 7.5" wide (once the tongue and groove are cut off) to create a 30" wide table, using four pieces (4 x 7.5) based on the fact they've been at 8" wide for a number of years and have remained true and are being laminated together, or is 7.5" too wide and maybe 8 x 3 1/4" would be better?

 

[GPowers]

When my dad died I salvaged a bookcase from his home. He had bought an entire room of paneling from an old house being torn down to make way for  church. He bought the room in 1960. He was told the building was 30 years old then. So this bookcase is at least 80 years. I was excited as the bookcase look like it was all oak. Well to my disappointment is was mostly veneer and the back panel, of the bookcase, was "thin flooring planks". I got two solid oak boards out of the entire bookcase.

Now the wall paneling was a different story. All the panel frames were solid Pecan.  [tongue]