workbench top- slab vs. laminated

[Paul Bombardt]

A couple of years ago I cut down a large hard maple tree and milled the butt log into lumber. I left some of the boards as 3" slabs and let them air dry with stickers.
I'm planning on building a workbench for my new shop, and it seems that most bench tops are made from laminated maple strips, 1x3 on edge. What are peoples thoughts on my using the slabs after squaring, jointing and planing, rather than ripping the slabs, only to joint them back into slabs again? Seems like if I rip the slabs down to about 10-12" boards (3" thick") and then joint 2-3 of these together, that would be as dimensionally stable with a lot less work involved.
A second question is that I plan to put a few strips in the top of either walnut or cherry to visually accent the top. Am I asking for trouble here due to their softer nature or difference in environmental stability?
Any help or thoughts on these two questions is much appreciated.

[Joe Jensen]

Which way does the grain run when you look at the cut end of the slab. If it runs perpendicular to the face, then the slab is quarter sawn. Quarter sawn lumber is pretty stable dimensionally so you will not have that much movement. It's pretty likely that your wood is not quartersawn. If not, you will get movement. Tops are laminated so that the movement of each piece is small, and the grain is aligned so that the movement of one board is likely to cancel out the movement of another. If it were me, I'd rip it into narrower strips and then alternate the grain so the movement cancels out...joe

[glenn bradley]

As Joe points out the strips help fight minimize wood movement but I have seen 100 year old benches that were made from 2 large slabs. I could not tell from the pictures if they were QS or not but they were also built in an age when a flat bench meant something a bit less than we have all come to expect now-a-days, eh?

[Paul Bombardt]

Joe,
Thanks for the response. You are correct, it is not quartersawn. I take your point; usually the easy way is not the best way.