Walnut Bar

[Pwk5017]

This was a first for me and decided that was enough of a reason to post it. This is a pretty large bar top commission i did over the weekend. I just got back from europe two weeks ago, and this was my first weekend back in the states and first weekend woodworking in 2-3 weeks. I started around 8:30am on saturday and was almost flat on my back with exhaustion by 11:30. Dont go to europe folks, it makes you weak. Probably had nothing to do with the numerous passes at the jointer and planer with 13-14" wide 10' 8/4 boards.... I dont typically domino my panels, because i make them in 19-20" panels and run them through the PM, but in this case i didnt have time for a second complete glueup. I cant express enough how impressive that little tool can be sometimes. 3 dominoes over 112" length, and my worst deviation was about 1/16" for an 18" span on one joint. A bit of no8 work following by 80grit on my 150/5 made pretty quick work of it. I have a 37" drum sander, but this piece was already at 41" wide and i have been having abysmal luck lately with drum sanding huge tops. It is very difficult to feed the pieces in parallel to the drums without gouging the front few inches prior to the second pressure roller engaging. They really need more runway and takeoff like my planer bed. After I sanded the main top to 180, i milled up some 8/4 narrow rip cuts from the scrap pile to make the front and side railing profile. This is the first time i partially framed a large panel, and i pegged the dominoes to make the piece a breadboard of sorts on the side piece. Dominoed the front rail to leave about a 1/4" lip to prevent drinks from wondering. Next, I dominoed the drink ledge with lip on to the rear of the bar. Cutting all the mortises involved holding the tool upside down. Surprisingly, this is no problem to line up with your marks and make accurate plunges. Thats where it currently sits. Sanded to 320 and meant to move it into the garage to finish last night, but my wife and i couldnt comfortable move the thing. I called a quits to it instead of risking a stupid mistake and damaging the thing. I have some additional help coming out tonight to carry it all of 18'. Ill update with finished photos and hopefully installed photos. 

[Eric.]

Looks good, but...uh...wood movement?

[estesbubba]

That looks great and looking forward to seeing it with finish on it. Like Eric brought up, hopefully you have accommodated wood movement that isn't obvious from the pics. 

[mat60]

I agree with Eric . Looks very nice also. He had to have done something we dont no about.

[AceHoleInOne]

Beautiful, umm, yep to what the others have said, what about wood movement?

 

-Ace-

[Pwk5017]

The end cap/breadboard, for lack of a better word, is only glued in on the bar side. The blue lines indicate dominoes that were pegged on the breadboard end and glued into the main bar. These were cut tight on the bar side and max width on the breadboard end. Center pink one was glued both sides.

 

The 90° connection between the ogee profiles is where a bit of confusion came into play. I dominoed these pieces together, but elongated the peg hole in the opposite direction you normally would on a breadboard. This is potentially where i made a mistake? In either case, it has room to be pulled away from the other piece if the top wants to do just that. The profiled piece wasnt glued into the drink ledge, which leaves things to float a bit.

 

I could run the calc. on how much a 41"+ top would move, but looking at the end grain, 60-70% of the board is rift to qs. It should get taller/shorter more than wider narrower. Still, im hoping the pegged dominoes do their thing. Each had about 1/8" on either side to get bigger or smaller. 

Oh, wanted to mention its made entirely of 1com 8/4 and a strip of 1com 5/4. You can see the 3 knots that i had to epoxy. One looked like a bit of a war wound after milling, but looks fine now that it is epoxied. Personally, i dont find epoxied knot centers to be an eyesore or contrived looking with dark epoxy. 

 

Also, maybe i had a definition incorrect in my mind. A "breadboard end" is an aesthetic AND a construction type to allow for movement, right? If you say i made a breadboard end, it cant be a breadboard end without pegged tenons in a bigger mortise, right? Anyways, that is the message i tried and failed to convey. The end cap profiled lip isnt glued to anything, save the center domino. Other than that, it is floating out in space with some 1/4" dowel pegs from below. 

[bushwacked]

wow when does the finish come? This this is going to look amazing! 

[wdwerker]

Breadboard should be across the entire end not between the long grain edges. The field of the table will expand and contract and the long grain edges will move with it. If it contracts significantly the trapped breadboard will cause problems, likely a big crack ! 

I learned about wood movement the hard way and had to replace a desktop for a bank executive . 

[Eric.]

13 minutes ago, wdwerker said:

Breadboard should be across the entire end not between the long grain edges. The field of the table will expand and contract and the long grain edges will move with it. If it contracts significantly the trapped breadboard will cause problems, likely a big crack !

Yep.  And if it expands it will separate the joint where the frame meets.

[Isaac]

So what is the fix at this stage? You could cut new joints to separate those corners from the long sides, but what to do with that gap, maybe infill with something only attached to the side runners?

[Isaac]

It is not my project, but that is not much of a solution.

Aren't woodworkers always going on about how they handle mistakes is a measuring stick for their skill level?

[Eric.]

Mike isn't being a dick, he's being honest.  There's not much that can be done at this point aside from a full do-over.  I bet cracks form this winter when the panel shrinks, probably where the long frame parts meet the panel, because the short frame parts will inhibit the movement.

[estesbubba]

The biggest challenge might be getting the existing frame off cleanly. 

[shaneymack]

The biggest challenge might be getting the existing frame off cleanly. 

Track saw.

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[estesbubba]

1 minute ago, shaneymack said:

Track saw.

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But if it's in a groove it might be tricky. 

[shaneymack]

But if it's in a groove it might be tricky. 

Shim the difference and plunge deeper.

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[AceHoleInOne]

An option if you have enough size? Remove the "frame" using a table saw and route the profile directly to the boards.

-Ace-

[Llama]

10 minutes ago, AceHoleInOne said:

route the profile directly to the boards.

I don't understand why this wasn't the initial plan. I think people are terrified of end grain for some reason. It's not that scary, it's part of the wood. 

[Pwk5017]

Damnit, the worst part is I actually thought about this for a minute. It's why I didn't do a miter at that corner, cause I knew it would come apart, maybe. In any case, I didn't want to roll with the miter, so I did a butt joint there with the reasoning that when it expanded or contracted, the front side and corner profile would remain good and I might have a gap appear and disappear at that butt joint. I would prefer the gap occur there then on the front show side of the piece. Sounds like my first time bread boarding earned a 50%. I was more concerned about expansion than contraction. One, my wood is 6%. Two, I just didn't think of it. If we are being honest, it's the whole reason I posted this thing in the first place. I was wispy washy about if that was performed correctly. 

 

If I did cut the end cap off and redid it full length, wouldn't the front of my rail be mismatched at different times of the year? This is the whole reason I didn't carry it the full width in the first place. I kept thinking, in the summer the front rail might protrude passed the end cap and the profile will look jacked up and in the winter the end cap will most likely protrude passed the front rail profile. Like I said, this is what lead to me doing it the way I did it. The more I think about it, I should have done a miter or butt joint and MT'ed the two ogee profiled pieces together at that corner and then done floating MT the whole width into the main top. This way the top can move as much as if wants and be independent of the profiled edge. Of course, I got caught up in traditional breadboard design where you have to glue the center one and float the others. My current problem is the frame's butt joint is trapped between the fixed tenon in the center. 

 

Is there no way to do this and maintain a smooth profile edge around the corner? If I leave it a half inch long, that will look like crap imo. 

1 minute ago, Llama said:

I don't understand why this wasn't the initial plan. I think people are terrified of end grain for some reason. It's not that scary, it's part of the wood. 

This would have been nice, but he wanted the lip or edge that most bars typically have. Most likely to prevent patrons from accidentally knocking drinks off. 

[AceHoleInOne]

8 minutes ago, Pwk5017 said:

This would have been nice, but he wanted the lip or edge that most bars typically have. Most likely to prevent patrons from accidentally knocking drinks off.

Shoot, that never stopped me 

 

-Ace-

[Eric.]

12 minutes ago, Pwk5017 said:

If I did cut the end cap off and redid it full length, wouldn't the front of my rail be mismatched at different times of the year?

 

Yep, but that's the nature of the beast.  Yours is extenuating circumstances because you have that profile, but ordinarily you just deal with the slight discrepancy over the seasons in the name of proper construction.  The blanket chests I finished this spring had breadboards on the top, and the panels have been proud of them all summer.  I expect them to shrink this winter and the breadboards will be longer than the panels are wide.  And Jimmy crack corn, so what...it's doing its job.

I know your customer wants what he wants, but sometimes you have to make design sacrifices when you use real wood.  I would personally cut the ogee profile in the panel itself...forget the frame.

http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com/articles/do-they-know-about-shrinkage/

[Pwk5017]

11/10 on the suck factor. 

[wdwerker]

My best guess is around 5/8  " expansion at the worst if you finish all sides of the top. I have seen breadboards that have a 1/8 to 3/16 reveal between it and the edge of the top. Other tops have a Vee groove at the seam , either will diminish the seasonal offset at the joint.

[JosephThomas]

2 hours ago, Pwk5017 said:

wouldn't the front of my rail be mismatched at different times of the year?

Yes, this always happens with breadboards, unless you are lucky, basically (kiln dried lumber, built and stored/used  in the same climate controlled environment for its entire lifetime, species that moves very little over time, etc etc etc). 

Bread boards are good for a couple things:  Helping keep a flat top if it extends away from the base too far, or when the top is a lot thicker material and might overpower the base. Or, just a design choice.  They are not required, as Mel said.

[Pwk5017]

The deed is done. Probably 1-2 hours to cut the offending piece off, make another, domino, elongate domino peg holes, and finally get the thing on. Im not terribly pleased with the whole thing. Im going to have to go on a bar crawl just to analyze several bars. Ive seen dozens with the huge moulding wrapping the entire thing. Then again, typical bars are 20" and deal with a lot less movement than 41". In any case, i only did this to continue the lip around the side for whatever purpose that serves, real or perceived. I guess if you spilled a full drink it would contain the spill. Same for sliding drinks across the bar western saloon style. Certainly more trouble than both of those are worth. 

 

I like end grain. Additionally, after all this discussion on breadboards, i think they are a complete POS. Perpetually never lining up with the sides would drive me nuts and is reason enough to never use them. Lesson learned on this one, never again. Put this as #2 behind, "dont start any work without a deposit".