I have a 2” thick solid oak table top to build that will be 86” round. We are a panel production shop with Bander, sliders and boring machines , but no solid wood machinery, any suggestions on how we could build this or best place in south Florida to order it? Thanks, harold.

Harold:

I'm sure someone will build it for you if you give them the money, but consider that a solid oak top of that size will tip the scales at about 290 pounds. It might be difficult to maneuver, even with a muscular shop crew, to say nothing of the wood expansion issues in a solid wood table of that size that you may likely encounter, which will have to be accommodated for in the tabletop to base interface design. Although you may need nothing more than gravity to hold it in place. :^)

What is the tabletop for? Could it possibly be constructed using veneer with a built up perimeter?

TonyF

It’s a dining room table. The base will have a cross shape that would is quite large as well which we can make. Has to be slid wood although I may be able to make it 1.5.

Hope they have an oversized entrance door to get it in the house! But the title says 84" and the explanation says 86" so hard to say.

Sorry, it to s 84” my typo, but in either case , this is a hugh estate on inter coastal with 9’ high entrance doors and base will be seperate section, so no problem with access.

I would most likely build two rectangular tops 85" x 85", 1" thick and then glue them together on top of each other, with oak boards on the top one going in perpendicular direction to the bottom one.
(Before gluing try to get individual boards planed to the same thickness and squared as good as possible and then use biscuit joinery to align them when gluing.)

Since I don't have some giant press I would clamp them with a bunch of clamps around the perimeter and a bunch of 1-3/4 screws screwed through the pre-drilled holes in bottom board.
Then I would roughly cut round shape from that, and use a manual router suspended on a piece of wood that orbits around the center of the board (like a propeller) to fine trim the edge.

But before all that I would have to build nice flat and level working table of that size that can support this building process and provide necessary flatness.

Anyway, a lot of improvising type of work for a shop not equipped for such projects.

I started my journey with custom build solid wood / steel tables, but once I learned that in two days of building lowest grade cabinets with almost zero mental effort and stress I can make the same profit as in few weeks of very stressful work of custom made projects, something clicked in my head and you know the rest of the story...

Oggie, if you glue the two layers with the grain perpendicular to each other won't they fight the glue line and eventually delaminate? I have never tried that?

Barring sub'ing this out to someone (which is likely your best bet) you could likely pull the whole thing off in-house on the CNC in two pieces with a very small amount of handwork at the end. Of course if you dont have in-house finishing thats another step.

We do far more surfacing and solid wood work on the CNC than I'd ever have thought. Doesnt sound like an overly complicated top to make regardless and a perfect match for the CNC.

I think it wise to request a retraction from Oggie. The method he describes is doomed.

If the table is to be anything other than 1-1/2" to 2" thick, it would have to have some sort of balanced construction.

Solid construction is fine. Sort thru your lumber to get color and grain alike. Face and edge the boards so the planks lie together and will clamp up without using the clamps to pull the boards where you need them.

There seems to be some sort of mystery or fear regarding solid wood with some people on the forum. There are no mysteries or magic. There is more science on solid wood than many other materials.

Your right about the two layers. sounds like a disaster. I dont have any solid wood machinery to joint or square. all my bladers are 80Tooth for panel material. dont even have clamps this big. as i said in my shop description, we build euro cabinets only. will probably farm it out. any one know someone in south florida who could do this for me? thanks.

Not in Fla but it might be worth an email to Paul Downs

Yeap, the gluing alone could be problematic, that's why i said:

"and a bunch of 1-3/4" screws screwed through the pre-drilled holes in bottom board"

Perpendicular direction suggestion was to minimize warping/bending/twisting of the finished tabletop.

I know it's not the proper way to do it, but the advice was for the tools and equipment available in his shop.

I once built tabletop 12' long and 4' wide out of 12' long 4''x4" douglas fir lumber straight from the lumber yard, i.e. not very straight ones.
Didn't had planer, didn't had joiner, so I drilled holes every 10" through the middle of the boards and put I think 13 threaded roads through 15 boards side by side and "screwed" them together for gluing.
It took tremendous amount of force to bring everything together; at one point I thought the nut/road threads will worn themselves out from how hard I was screwing them, even if it was 5/8" threaded rod diameter, so I had to lubricate them to be able to continue, and the big flat 2.5" over sized washers were sinking into the wood and getting into the shape of a bowl.

At the end I glued them together but the result was far from flat. Luckily the boards were thick enough for the tabletop to still appears thick when it was sanded down to make it look flat.

There were some massive boards underneath running across tabletop width that surely helped in keeping it flat over time, but I'm not sure if it would remain flat on it's own.

Anyway, would not recommend anyone now to do it this way on a regular basis.
For me it was the time of experiments and time of learning, surely not the time of doing business :)

When I inquired some local woodworking shops for manufacturing solid oak tabletops 1.5" thick the price was over $100 per square foot (maybe around $130 if I recall correctly) , don't remember now if the material was even included in that price.
And that's how I got into cabinets :)

Why are you doubling down on that construction Oggie? And even describing an even more disturbing method of construction. All your methods just ignore every accepted construction method. Steel, and screws will not restrain wood movement. It's either going to bow, or split.

Harold, if you don't have a jointer or thickness planer, why even ask about building it yourself? To go 2" thick, you'll have to buy 10/4 stock and that's nearly impossible in white oak. But then you don't mention what species of oak either. Hopefully you haven't already bid it, since you have no idea what it will cost to buy from someone else or having to buy several thousand dollars worth of machinery and clamps.

Rich

I think my posts have been misunderstood.

I've described something I would have done and had done in the circumstances where I didn't have proper tools/machinery to do it right, but for whatever reason (that is beyond this scope) I still had to do it somehow.
Especially the second example was an anecdote of poor man ridiculous attempt to build a tabletop out of non-straight, non-squared, longitudinally twisted, 4" x 4" solid boards.

Hopefully, Harold is not in a position to have to do it despite not being equipped for it, so he can choose the other (proper) ways of doing it or not to do it at all.

Sorry for the confusion I brought into the thread.

Harold:

See what these people can do for you.

Good luck.
TonyF

https://www.ecustomfinishes.com/shop/round-dining-tables/large-84-round-table/