I have a little maple tabletop I've been playing with... making it for daughter-in-law. She was pretty exacting in what she wanted it to look like and what it was to be mounted to for a base... I got it cut out to a perfect circle, strong backed to prevent warping or bowing, and I'm down to edgebanding it.




Nice and smooth and ROUND now.


I cut 2 pieces of maple banding on my tablesaw to a thickness of 3/16 and 78" long each (a good bit longer than the circumference of the table). Ran a pine board thu my planer to get a good flat surface, then using double sided tape, stuck the banding down on the board and decreased it's thickness to just under 3/32".

I have had problems in the past, steaming or soaking wooden edbanding to make it pliable enough to make it round without splitting out. The problem I had was not ggetting the wetorsteamed banding around the radius. The problem came when it dried out before the glue set. As it dried, it shrunk in overall length and left an opening..a vertical seam.

I currently have both pieces rolled up to about a 24" circle and my table top is 19 !/2" diameter.
I am not going to use contact cement. Too unforgiving if I make a mistake and I would have to chip the banding off in liitle pieces, probably damaging the tabletop in the process. Using Gorilla carpenter's glue. I have a metal strap clamp made to hold the banding firmly down around the top.
What's the chances of applying the banding to the radius raw..with no steam or soak and it not split or crack?

(I've put lots of edge banding on in another life but I had a pretty expensive machine to help back then..it even applied the glue and perfectly did the cutoff at the end)

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 02-22-2022).]

quote Originally posted by cliffw: That's not maple, is it ? Maple laminated maybe ? If it is / was maple I would just router it.

Router what?

And yes, it's raw unstained maple. That's what maple looks like before it gets the coloration you see in chairs and dining room tables.

This is what it will look like once it gets stained.

(She wants it to match this maple chair)


Bottom of the same chair. You can see a bit of the original raw coloration where the stain and varnish has peeled and faded.

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 02-23-2022).]

[This message has been edited by Jake_Dragon (edited 02-23-2022).]

Real maple from mill cut board is quite 'hairy'. I'm guessing the maple you used came from a retail or wholesale hardwood supplier. In that case, it would have been lightly run thru a planer to remove the roughness and true it up. Much like plywood that either comes rough, one good side, or 2 good sides. This came seasoned, but straight from a mill. The reason maple is sued so often in dining room furniture is because of it's strength, the fact that it can be bent, stained from light to dark (it takes stain really well) and because of it's grain and ability to joint together without showing much seam.

This picture shows 2 pieces of maple. The bigger one is a drop left from cutting 4 pieces to do the glue up I did to make the round tabletop. The smaller piece is a tablesaw cut off I did of that same board.



This is what she brought me to mount the top to when I finish it.. you can see one of the pieces of banding rolled up behind it. The little side table to the left btw, is also maple but a completely different stain on it from her chairs or my dining room table. (It's one of several crap collector pieces of 'furniture' I have)


Why? Both the chair and the old milk can were her grandfather's (he was a dairy farmer) and she wanted to make use of the can, sitting between 2 maple chairs in her hallway..

Zeb and Mytime are correct. There is a seam between the maple top and the pine backing boards. That wasn't supposed to happen as the original pieces of maple were 1 1/4" rough cut thickness but it became necessary.
More explanation forthcoming..

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 02-23-2022).]