# Gluing wood face to face



## DogwoodTales (Jun 17, 2011)

I'm making a table top (36"x72") with zebra wood.
The zebra wood available to me is 1" thick.
I want to have an edge appearance of 1.25", maybe 1.5".
I'm thinking about doubling up the edges
and then plane down the underside as needed to get the desired thickness appearance.

The edge grain on the long side shouldn't be too challenging to match up.
I could just rip a board, flip over the cut off, 
keeping the cut edges adjacent to each other,
match up the grain as best as possible and glue the sandwich together.

The end grain on the middle boards would be a similar operation.
Starting with, say, a 7 foot length of zebra wood, cut 3" off each end
to get a clean line with grain patterns that will closely match the grain patterns
that will result after another 3" is cut off that end.
Then take that 3" cut off and glue it under the board without flipping it,
match the grain pattern as best as possible and glue it in place.

In both situations above a lot of clamps will be needed to ensure there are no gaps for a seamless appearance.
The side to be planed down will be the glue ups on the bottom, not the top.
I want to maintain the most thickness in the top.

Now here is my question.
Will this work?

I don't see any reason why not as there will be no cross grain concerns
and the grain direction in the sandwiched pieces will match in both cases.
The long edge might have a slight variation in grain direction
as I would flip the board over and glue the same underside face.
But it seems to me that this variance should be negligible with no effect on the wood movement.

Is there some conern that I'm overlooking with this idea?
Has anyone here done this with zebra wood or any other hard wood?
What was the result?

Thanks


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## CharlieM1958 (Nov 7, 2006)

I don't see a problem. I have made several sets of table legs this way when all I had was 4/4 stock. It works fine.


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## Toolz (Feb 26, 2008)

I did it with soft maple. What I did was clue up the main table top and shaped the ends in a gentle curve. I then glued up boards to the bottom that were about an inch too wide. once the clamped glued bottoms boards were dry I un-clamped the assembly , flipped it over and used a router with an bearing bit to sneak up on the ends and edges until they were all the same. It worked fine for me.


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