Boxcar Floor Dining Table Design Questions

[Eric Bayes]

I'm building a dining room table using reclaimed flooring planks from old boxcars. These planks are all butcher block construction 1' wide made from 3/4" strips. They finished out about 2" in thickness. I'm emulating the Emmerson Dining Table made by West Elm for this design with a few modifications. The table and legs will be made from maple planks but will also incorporate breadboard ends made from 5" wide segments of an oak plank. These planks have been a lot of fun to work with with one exception. Some of the planks (as it would happen, the planks on the outside of the table top and leg sections) were constructed with a fortifying 3/8" triangular threaded rod run through the butcher block lamination, and is truly unsightly. When working through this design I've run into two questions I would like some help with:

1. Attachment of the breadboard ends. My plan is to do this with large Dominos. Given that this is all butcher block construction, most of the wood movement will be through the thickness of the table - top to bottom. Conventional breadboard end attachment with dominos affixes one domino tight to the top and bb end and uses wider widths on the ends of the breadboard end with one side not being glued. My thoughts are that with this grain alignment I may not have to worry about this, and will be able to glue all dominos in place. If not, I will drawbore the dominos and widen the holes through the outer dominos.

2. Hiding the exposed reinforcement bars. My plan to do this is to laminate a strip of QSWO on the edges of the table top and legs. An easier solution would be to use maple as that what the rest of the table top is, but I want to use to QSWO to complement the breadboard ends. My question is whether I should be concerned with the differential wood movement over the 2" table top thickness or just go ahead and laminate it as you would the same wood species? If I should be concerned about it, one option would be to affix the oak strips using thin short dominos and glue them into both domino slots but not the QSWO itself. I would rather avoid that complication if possible, as I could see those being broken off in the future.

Any thoughts or help would be appreciated.

Eric

[Jamie Buxton]

You say " most of the wood movement will be through the thickness of the table ". I don't think so. Wood expands and contracts across the grain. The other way of saying this is that wood expands and contracts in all directions, except along the grain. (And when I say along the grain, I mean the direction that the fibers in the wood go -- vertically, when the tree is standing up.) This means that unless your grain direction is across the table top, the top is going to expand and contract across the top. So your breadboard ends should be attached with the traditional sliding means. You can do this with dominos.

I think your grain direction runs end-to-end on the table top -- that is, the same as the oak strip you're planning on. Just glue it on.