Maurice and I were able to put in a few more hours of work on the benches today. The planks that will make up my top were trimmed closer to final size. We are designing both benches to be <25" wide on top as that is the maximum width of my jointer/planer, and the thought of hand planing these beasts or feeding them through a wide belt sander after glue up is somewhat underwhelming....
Because one edge of my slabs had some pith wood present, it had checked fairly extensively during the drying process. Stuart Kent kindly agreed to provide some design consultation; after some idea bouncing with Stuart, Maurice and I set my slabs back up in the sawmill to trim a few inches more of pith wood out. This in turn significantly reduced the amount of checked areas that require filling.
After trimming the plank width, Maurice and I taped up the slabs and applied some West System epoxy to fill the voids.
Maurice, Stuart and I all bounced some ideas about color, and in the end decided that black was probably the best option due to some discoloration near the checks.
Maurice and I mixed in some black dye and filled in some of the checked portions that will be visible after the benches are complete, and then we used undyed epoxy to fill in the rest.
I had to make a quick trip to West Marine late this afternoon to pick up some more epoxy (arrived 4 minutes before closing - whew!), and I finished filling in the voids late tonight after a pre-scheduled meeting was complete.
Tomorrow's goal is to edge joint all of the slabs and glue the tops together. The plan is to use a 4" end mill bit in a router, and run the router down a track to provide the necessary guidance.
More to come....
