Roubo planing and jointing

[Jepthy 4]

I know there have been a ton of Roubo questions, and I am enjoying reading the responses.  I may not have made it far enough, but I haven't come across an answer to this yet.

I have my wood dimensioned for the top, and am ready to do the glue up.  It is 4 7/8 thick, so I am hoping I will have plenty to flatten it out.

My concern is that as the wood is laying flat on the sawhorses, the wood isn't perfectly smooth on top or on bottom.  I.E. there are small ridges when you run your finger across the boards, which I think is to be expected.  As long as the bottom is relatively flat, once I send the finished top through the planer, it will all smooth itself out.

However, I imagine there is a possibility that I won't have a perfect 90 degrees between the bottom/top of the workbench (which is what I will be planing), and the side of the workbench (which is the 4 7/8 dimension that I have been planing to get the top's width).  Mark stated in one of his videos that it is important to have this at 90 degrees because this will become a work surface.

So my question is, should I leave the top a little wider than needed so that after I am done flattening the top I can take a final trip through the jointer?  I know it means putting a very heavy top that is 8-9 inches wide, on its side and running it through the jointer.  But that seems to be the only way I can think to ensure that the flattened top has a perfect 90 edge.  Not even sure if the jointer fence can keep the board at a perfect 90 at that point.

 

Or does it not really mater that much?

 

I hope that makes sense.

 

Thanks for any feedback.

[pkinneb 1,792]

First off welcome to the forum!!

Regarding your question is it possible to do that? yes but... you are correct the slabs are very heavy so in my opinion unless you can get some help and have a long jointer bed it will be difficult to do. I would do what you can to get it flat and square now while in the strip phase. How about some pics i never get tired of seeing roubo builds  

[Brendon_t 2,422]

After my tops were to thickness, I had to take a few hand planes to bring the sides in square. Lost a little width which I'm happy for with the extra room for getting clamp heads in there

[RichardA 3,689]

Joint the outside board before you glue it up.

[Jepthy 4]

Thank you for the feedback, it has been helpful. May have overdone the glue, but better than not enough, right?!

 

half the top glued, hopefully tackle the other half next weekend. 

[Chestnut 2,734]

Yeah that looks like a bit of overkill on the glue. I've found it comes of concrete easiest if you let it dry completely.

[Jepthy 4]

Yeah, I let it dry then take a small hammer and tap it gently and it pops right off. 

[Chestnut 2,734]

Nice. I have a dedicated concrete floor chisel for cleaning up glue and what not but the hammer idea is a good one as well.

[pkinneb 1,792]

I keep a piece of plastic around for bigger panels and use place mats for the smaller glue ups. 

[Jepthy 4]

So far so good. A little annoyed that I ended up with a slight twist on the top. It is between 1/32 and 1/16th over the full 8 foot length (if you hold one corner down, the other corner 8 feet away comes up 1/16 or less off the work surface). 

I am thinking there isn’t much I can do as my jointer is only 6 inches. Hopefully it will work itself out when I put it on the base.  Or should I try to do something more now, and if so what?  I can go at it with a hand plane, but I am worried that with that length of a span, I won’t ever really make it flat enough. 

Looking forward to the weekend when I can milk up the other half. Not enough time after work to mull and glueup innone night 

[Chestnut 2,734]

Do you have marc's guild project? If so he covers flattening the bench in  there. I'd say if you only have that little twist crack a bottle of champagne and celebrate.

If you don't have the guild project marc covered flattening his bench on the free site. He uses a router sled and a big router bit. For the tiny amount of twist you have i don't think there will be any problems for you to get it corrected after everything is said and done.

[Jepthy 4]

Phew, took longer than I wanted, but I finally got the milling done on both sides. They are 4 inches thick, and my garden has a whole lot of maple shavings to till into it come spring. 

I was trying to cut the back slab to dimensions, and ran into an issue. Using the marking technique Marc showed, my lines weren’t quite perfect all the way around the board. Where I was to meet up with where the line started, I was about the width of two pencils lines off.  Something is slightly out of square, and  I am hesitant to put it across my 6 inch jointer to fix it  I am already at final dimensions and I don’t know that it will leave that smooth of a face if I tried it.

I figure that if I reference the same side, I would be okay.

In Marc’s video, he uses a track saw. I don’t have one. Closest thing I have is a dewalt circular saw. So I bought a fine tooth blade and tried to see if I could get similar results. It went ... poorly. The two cuts (one from the top and one from the bottom), didn’t line up. I think the blade isn’t ridged enough (it is quite thin) and I can’t quite get it to a perfect 90 angle. 

So I eventually bagged that idea and moved to my radial arm saw. It was able to cut it beautifully, I might be slightly out of square, but I don’t think it will matter that much. 

However, I need to start thinking about making that giant tennon. I can’t use the saw technique Mark shows, as my saw isn’t accurate enough. 

Any suggestions?  I am leaning towards the router, but am concerned about getting everything lined up. 

 

Here is a photo of my slab, and another showing how I am slightly out of square. I figured I would plane that down to square when I am done, since it will probably be hand work, and as I check further down the slab it is actual better. 

 

Thanks!

[pkinneb 1,792]

Looking good!!

[Jepthy 4]

Got the end cap done. Is it just me? I have to reassure myself that it will be okay when joints don’t look seamless or water tight. Slight gap at the top where the cap meets the top. On the side with the tennon, I eased the grain by beveling it down, so while it looks like a gap, it isn’t nearly as big as it appears. 

[pkinneb 1,792]

Looks great!

[MattF 345]

My end cap has slight gaps also. Should not affect functionality at all.

 

Bench looks good so far. 

[Brendon_t 2,422]

18 hours ago, MattF said:

My end cap has slight gaps also. Should not affect functionality at all.

 

Bench looks good so far. 

Same same.  I figured they would bother me later. Not a once.