Breadboard Ends

Look around. Most table tops you see today are plywood or laminate. Rarely do you see solid wood tops. Apart from being cheaper, non-solid wood tops are easy to construct because they're stable. You could just screw the top to the carcase and it would be fine.

But solid wood tops are more beautiful and interesting. They also require some fancy planning to last. This is my first attempt at a solid wood top. I decided early on I wanted to use breadboard ends to keep the top panels flat over time, to cover the end grain of the glued-up panels, and to allow the solid wood panels to expand and contract with the seasons.

It seemed the simplest way to attach the breadboards was tongue and groove, one of the few joints I can cut (with my router). It was more difficult than I imagined. The main problem was my table top was not perfectly flat (see previous post). That means, when I ran my router base over the table top, it moved up and down in waves, with the panels. Cutting the tongue involved some frustration and lots of router passes with slight adjustments. In the end, I got something I can deal with.