Advice for Making a Parquet Desktop

[ShavedSpoke]

Recently discovered that one of our neighbours had a load of the parquet we have in our house stored in his shed and wanted to get rid of it. For a while I've wanted to make a parquet coffee table for the lounge, but now I have a huge pile of the stuff, I may parquet the whole house. 95% of it has even been cleaned up already.

Blocks are 9"x3"x1" maple. How might one go about creating a 5' x 2' solid desktop while dealing with movement? I'd prefer to match the herringbone pattern on the floors, but I considered that maybe a brick pattern would at least constrain the movement to a single dimension.

 

[Orraloon]

You should have a chance with the brick pattern. You can by hardwood counter tops done that way so it does work. Jointing the edges and getting them all the same width will be your real challenge. If you have a thicknesser you could stick lines of them to strips of wood with double sided tape to joint the edges as 9'' would be too short to sent through on their own. I would do the glue up in batches say 2 strips at a time clamped between 2 strait edges then later glue up the 4 double strips. If you don't have a thicknesser then you better be a dab hand with the plane and shooting board.
Regards
John

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I would assume (possibly wrongly) that the parquet would need to be mounted on a board the full size of the planned desktop to provide rather more strength than edge glued parquet alone.

If glued and pinned (from the reverse) to (say) 18mm ply, any movement will be very limited/zero.

The observation from other respondents that ensuring consistent dimensions makes good sense.

 

[Cabinetman]

Interesting problem, a few thoughts.
Perhaps reduce the thickness or the top will weigh a ton!
After gluing them all together perhaps do the surround a bit like a picture frame so that the table top moves behind it, yes the surround would be higher than the top but heyho.
It would be easy enough to make a jig that you can drop the pieces in one at a time to plane, then drop a thin piece of card in and plane all the second edges, a pretty reliable way to get them all the same width.
I hope it’s been kept dry in his shed, a period of acclimatisation might be in order.
Maple is a beautiful wood to work with, I always think it planes a bit like Nylon/plastic.
Have fun Ian.

 

[ShavedSpoke]

If you have a thicknesser you could stick lines of them to strips of wood with double sided tape to joint the edges as 9'' would be too short to sent through on their own.

Yes. I have a planer/thicknesser. Also have a set of old blades that have a slight nick at one end. I've sharpened them, and plan is to run the stock through on a sled and keep to one side.

I would assume (possibly wrongly) that the parquet would need to be mounted on a board the full size of the planned desktop to provide rather more strength than edge glued parquet alone.

If glued and pinned (from the reverse) to (say) 18mm ply, any movement will be very limited/zero.

Yeah. This was my initial thought. Get everything dimensioned and then glue to a backer. My concern was whether that would constrain it enough. I've seen a couple of people do this on youtube, but then you never see quite how clean the finish is, or whether it looks any good 6 months later. Good to know you also think that would be stable enough. Good tip on pinning it from the back to create a mechanical fixing.

I hope it’s been kept dry in his shed, a period of acclimatisation might be in order.
Maple is a beautiful wood to work with, I always think it planes a bit like Nylon/plastic.

Yes. It was off the ground and dry, and it's been in my shop for a couple of months now as well. Agree it's lovely wood. I believe it was was originally from an old post office. I hand planed the surface off a few blocks the other day. Looks beautiful. Much nicer than the slightly grimy and scuffed floor in the house.

 

[Cabinetman]

Well I’ve re-read all of this and I believe that fastening a layer of solid wood 5’ x 2’ to a piece of plywood that isn’t going to move will eventually end up with either a split top or a bowed one, the forces in a plank of wood (reconstituted or not) that size are not going to be constrained.

EDIT when I had been furniture making commercially for a few years I learned this the hard way by pushing the bounds of what’s possible too far. I had made a table with a dozen trapped inset panels, but fairly small ones 5” x 3” the next piece I made (for myself luckily) I pushed the panels to12 x 7” nope, too much, a little change in humidity and the joints in the frames were pushed apart. Lesson learned, a fairly strong surround will be capable of containing the small amount of movement from a narrow piece of wood, the movement from a piece of wood twice as wide was just too powerful, it would have needed such a substantial frame as to be ugly.
Ian

 

[ShavedSpoke]

Thanks. Sounds like my best option if I used the parquet would be to glue it up in a regular block/brick pattern. I could glue it up into a few 'planks' using a jig, then run each plank through the planer before gluing them up to final width.

 

[gasman]

I would probably domino them together into longer 'planks' then run them through the thicknesser, then join the planks with dominos / biscuits / long tongues
Cheers Mark

 

[johnnyb]

I made one from scrap bits of redwood. Accurate blocks of course. Accurate layout of lines of parquet. Use cardboard as spacers then mix sanding dust and cellulose lacquer and force in the gaps....sand flat.