Finished the benchtop lamination

I removed the clamps from the lamination and had a look at the results.

benchtop laminated — The laminated benchtop

While the whole piece is nice and solid, and there are no failed joins, some of the joins aren’t as tight as I would have liked. In part I suspect this is due to having the four heavier T-bar clamps all on the top side of the piece, and the three lighter pipe clamps on the underside. So I think that there was greater total clamping pressure across the top side, which allowed the pieces to “fan out” towards the bottom.

benchtop end view — The laminated benchtop end close-up

I made a start on planing down the top face of the benchtop. The idea here is to make sure that the face is flat across its width, all the way along. On this face, it was consistently high at the edges and low in the middle, which I think is at least in part due to the “fan out” effect I mentioned.

benchtop surface planing — Planing the benchtop surface

Lessons learned

Try to balance out the clamping pressure at the top and bottom of the piece.