Today, we’re building a custom bar top for a bakery.
Materials and Tools:
Hardwood: Red Oak Lumber
Glue: Tightbond II Wood Glue
Tools: Table Saw, Jointer, Planer, Router, Sander, Clamps, Kreg jig
Finish: Polyurethane sealer
Step by Step Process
For this project, I used red oak lumber. I milled everything down and prepped it for use. To get started, I snapped a chalk line on my workbench, then screwed a couple of boards along that line. This gave me a straight reference edge to start laying the boards for the bar top, and it also gave the clamps something solid to grab onto. That helped keep everything flat while the glue dried.
Each board has pocket holes on the butt ends, and I used Titebond II wood glue on both the edges and the ends to hold everything together. At this stage, the wood is about thirteen-sixteenths of an inch thick.
The full bar top is going to be 28 inches wide and about 14 feet long at its longest point. To make it easier to manage, I split the main bar into two sections each 14 inches wide and 14 feet long. Once both sections were assembled, I added pocket screws for extra strength.
After that, I ran both sections through the planer. This saved a lot of time on sanding and helped remove some rough spots.
Next, I moved on to the angled portion of the bar. I made four additional sections, each 5 feet long and 14 inches wide. Once those were glued up, I planed them down and sanded them while waiting for the glue to fully cure.
Then it was time to glue the two longest sections of the bar together. I ran both edges through the table saw to make sure they were perfectly flush before gluing them. I took extra care to keep everything aligned so there wouldn’t be any raised edges, which made sanding much easier later on.
For sanding, I started with 120 grit and worked my way up to 220 grit to get everything smooth.
Unfortunately, I missed hitting record during the final assembly, so I don’t have footage of putting the entire bar top together. But I had a cardboard template of the original bar top, which made it easy to recreate the angles. I used a track saw to get clean, straight cuts, and biscuit joints to help align and secure the sections.
To finish it off, I applied a polyurethane sealer to the bar top. I did three coats total, sanding lightly with 220 grit between each coat, except for the final one.
Installation was pretty straightforward. I secured the new bar top directly to the old one with screws. It fit perfectly, and all I had to do afterward was reinstall the sneeze guard.
Out with the old and in with the new. This is how it turned out.