Newbie Question

Billy
In gluing your 2×4s together you will need some clamps ,do you have any available ? Given the limited amount of tools you have I would be very careful about buying straight 2×4s to start with and kiln dried wood is the way to go if you can afford it. Unless your bench is very short I think a bench top jointer is going to be very difficult to use. Since you face gluing the wood together you will only need to make sure the top is reasonable flat. If you have some clamps you can glue your wood together in sections and then glue the sections together. when gluing them to gether clamp the wood so it’s as even as possible. If you don’t have clamps you can screw a piece on one at a time assuming you have a screw gun and then remove the screws before you add another piece of wood after the glue has dried. After the top is all glued up as flat as you can get it then find some thing to use as a straight edge and move it around on the top to see how flat it is. If it is pretty good leave it alone until you can buy or borrow a belt sander to fine tune it. If it has lots of hills and valleys you will have to use your plane and try and got the top flat by repeatedly checking in all directions ,keep working untill it’s close and once it is don’t do any more untill you can borrow a belt sander. This should get you close.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

OK…. Maybe I was a little unclear. I do have more tools than that. I do have a belt sander, a table saw (8”), drills, clamps, circular saw, and a miter saw (Not mine, but my buddy hasn’t asked for it back!..... yet)

So I don’t need to worry about the faces being jointed? I’m going to joint the edges, so I can knock off the rounded corners you get with construction wood. I can do that easily with the hand held power planer.

I would joint one face and saw the other, but my table saw is….. well, not great. With it only having an 8” blade, it cant rip the edge of a 2×4 in one pass.

Thanks again!

-- Marine, Nurse, Dad.

Billy;
I’d think the most important thing would be to first get the two faces flat, then parallel, and then make the top and bottom perpendicular to the faces. And as Jim pointed out, that might be difficult with longer boards and your bench-top jointer. I don’t have the skill to flatten boards like you need, but you’ve picked an inexpensive material and if you put in the time and material to do it right, you’ll have a valuable skill that will serve you well in any future woodworking endevours. Go for it.

Jim also had a great idea about screwing laminates one at a time, you could do two at a time working out from the middle. Unless you have some pretty hefty clamps its pretty hard to remove all the gaps when gluing large subassemblies together.

As far as making the top flat, while not the cheapest route, once you’ve planed it as close as you can, take it to a local cabinet shop and have them run it through their sander. A local shop for me charges $75 / hr and it took almost an hour for a hard maple benchtop.

Good luck and post some pictures

-- Trees, a wonderful gift --Joe--