Tongue and groove faux butcher block table top

[Brad Pool]

I am making a bar height table for a guy i work with. He wants it to be a butcher block top farm house table look. My plan is to rip some maple to about 2.5 inches wide and cut them in varying lengths and offset them to give a pieced together buther block look. Will this gave the table stability and help prevent it from warping over time, or should i use some sort of underlayment to keep it flat? 

[drzaius]

Any underlayment such as plywood or MDF will cause all kinds of warping issues. Much better to just glue up the solid maple strips. How thick & long will it be?

[wdwerker]

An edge glued solid wood top would be best supported by legs connected by aprons.  Make sure to allow for wood movement when you mount the top. Underlayment is a bad idea. 

[RichardA]

Or you could buy a removed bowling ally lane , or used or new tractor trailer flooring. It will cut down a lot of work, and be for the most part stable.

[Just Bob]

Or take the faux out of it and use real butcher block:  www.grizzly.com/products/Maple-Butcher-Block-60-x-24-x-2-1-4-/T21247

I have used the Grizzly butcher block in 2 kitchens.  Great stuff to work with, very stable, and ended up looking great.   Since one kitchen was for my daughter and the other for my wife, if something was wrong with it I would have heard about it.  Its been about 6 years on both of them.

[wdwerker]

You can either route a tongue & groove or finger joint in the ends at the butt joints or use dowels, biscuits or Dominos if you go with your 2 1/2" board rips idea. Then edge glue the strips & sand. Drum sander makes quick work of this. Or glue up widths that will fit through your planer then glue those up & sand the seams.