Dinning Table Top Questions

[Richard Strauss]

I'm in the process of planning a Mission Style QS White Oak dinning table. The table will be 44" square with two 11" leaves that slide under each end of the table. I've read where some say that the boards for the table top should be 3" wide, but want to use boards that are approximately 5" wide. I usually make the tops of coffee and end tables using biscuits to glue the boards together and plan to do the same here. I think breadboard ends will be needed for the top and if that is the case I would probably want them on the leaves at each end. How wide should the breadboard end be?

Any help or input you have will go a long ways in making my day.

[Jim Becker]

Whomever told you that boards for a table top should be a certain width is standing on "old woodworking tales". You could make that table from one wide board if it were available to you. Personally, I prefer wider stock and even go to great lengths to carefully match color and grain to make any glue joints disappear as much as possible. For your project, of course, you'll likely want to choose your actual board width based on the quality and figure of your available material.

Now that said, no matter what width you choose, you still must build your project with wood movement in mind. That not only includes expansion, but also insuring that the supports and method of fastening your top to the under-structure of the table is appropriate for keeping it flat.

On the breadboard ends, I think that most of the tables I've seen that use them will have the width for those ends at about 3-4", again depending on the design. But it could be wider if that works better for the proportions of the table, itself.

[Frank Drew]

Personally, I prefer wider stock and even go to great lengths to carefully match color and grain to make any glue joints disappear as much as possible. For your project, of course, you'll likely want to choose your actual board width based on the quality and figure of your available material.

I very much agree with Jim about using as few and as wide and as well chosen boards as possible for table tops, although with quartered stock all those glue joints might not show as much. To me nothing looks sorrier than a top with completely random boards of various widths, with no attempt at color or grain matching. Which isn't to say that a table top glued up from relatively narrow pieces as an intentional design feature couldn't work, but the material would have to be carefully selected and probably all of the same width to be successful, and even then the effect probably would be of striping rather than the beauty of any individual pieces of wood.

Breadboard ends are a matter or personal preference, I guess; I'm not a big fan of them since I'm not convinced they do anything except add considerable labor to the project.

[Mike Cutler]

The issue with the width of the boards would come more into play with flatsawn boards, whose grain structure was more tangenital across the width. The issue here would be to minimize the ability of any one single board to cup excessively and distort the top.

Using QSWO you will for all intensive purposes be eliminating the cupping issue, and now have to accommodate wood expansion/contraction across the face.
As long as the table top can float. The width of the QSWO shouldn't be an issue. ( If it was, all of the original Stickley's I've studied were built incorrectly, and I don't think that's the case.)

[Jesse Cloud]

Ditto on the advice above.

Couple of comments on breadboards - they do two things: hide end grain and reduce cupping in the main part of the top. On the other hand, they will stay the same length while your top grows and shrinks, so they will be a disjoint, except for when the humidity is the same as when it was built.

The width of the breadboard is mostly for looks, except that it needs to be wide enough to accomodate a good sized tenon/spline and if you make it too wide it will provide enough leverage when pushed down upon to break the joint.