Cutting the benchtop to length

Today I completed two jobs: swept up the mountains of pine shavings produced so far, and cut the benchtop to length!

I measured 1680mm from the end I’d already trimmed up, and cut a knife line around the piece.

benchtop cut knife line — The knife line marking my cut

I then clamped the piece to my sawhorses for the cut. I took advantage of a learned lesson from the previous cut here; with the sawhorses placed at the far ends of the benchtop, the sawhorse at the cut end was in the way of where I wanted to plant my feet while sawing. This time I moved both sawhorses closer in to the middle and used clamps for some additional stability while cutting and end planing.

benchtop cut prepared — Preparing for the cut

As I started the cut, I noticed there was a lot of vibration in part of the bench, and then realised it was because of a big gap in the second join along in the lamination. Once my cut made it through the first two planks, those two waste pieces fell right off, so it’s clear that there was no join at all holding planks 2 and 3 together down that end, and the gap extends a good way down the benchtop. Not enough for the whole join to fail easily, but certainly enough for some noticeable flex. I am not sure why the join didn’t work here, it could be that I didn’t use enough glue, or didn’t adequately smooth out the surface, or maybe the pressure was not adaquate to counter the bowing in the timber. In any case, it’s a disappointment, but I’m not sure that there is a lot I can do about it now.

benchtop cut complete — The completed saw cut

And then again, smoothed off the end grain in the cut with my block plane. And that’s the benchtop pretty much done. I could spend time trying to get the top more flat – it still has a bit of a dip in the middle – but for the time being I think I’ll move on to other parts of the project. There will always be time for more refinement later, and I’m sure that the benchtop surface will accumulate dings and scrapes as I go along. The final piece weighs in at 21kg.

benchtop end planed — The completed benchtop piece

Next stop: laminating the aprons! Hopefully I’ve learned enough about laminating at this point that I won’t screw this next one up. There’s only one way to find out.

Lessons learned

Getting the lamination right is really important.
Use more glue.