It's not solid. It's one piece of maple on top and 4 pieces of back board underneath the Maple (along with the metal stiffener.)

The maple is a glue up, 4 pieces jointed and glued together with 4biscuits per joint. Originally, it was going to be a 24" diameter circle and that was fine, but after I got it all glued up,left clamped in both planes for a week, she called and had decided 24" was too big for the location she wanted it and asked me to make it smaller.

That would be fine, except for the biscuits. The size she wanted meant the cut from rectangle to circle would go thru the biscuits on each end. In addition, the weather changes and humidity here gave me real problems once I released the clamps. It warped and bowed. One day in one direction, then as the weather changed, it would warp the other way.And, I ran into bad places in the interior of the maple. I had to use my router sled to get them out since it was now too big to fit thru my planer, which meant I ended up with a lot thinner piece than I wanted. Instead of starting all over with a new glue up,I decided to go with the back boards and just edge band it to hide the seam and the visible biscuit edges. The backboard and banding would give it the heft and appearance of just over 1 5/8 thickness too.

I had intended before that, to just cut the circle out on the bandsaw, but since edgebanding requires a perfect as possible round smooth circle, I used my router with a centerswing pivot to make the circle. In one of the above pics,you see thepivotswing and a temporary board (2 sided taped down) with a bolt located in perfect center of the rectangle, to ensure a true circle. The feathering you see in the 1st circle cut picture is a result of the router bit breaking thru the good side of the maple.It cleared right up with a tiny bit of sanding.


You might be able to see the visible edge of one of the biscuits here:






I keep it in the house now, so it doesn't decide to absorb moisture and bow or warp again.
My son,once I band it,is going to do te final sanding and staining to match the chair, as I'm colorblind and really can't do it.

I have another much more involved natural wood project I began for wife last year and is yet unfinished..It was for that, I constructed my routersled. Was supposed to be an 'all girls' project, with each one of the neighborhood women each doing one. I went down where they were working in another guy's shop and they were trying todo it with a belt sander... I ended up doing wife's and as far as I know the other girls haven'tdone the basic cutting down on their pieces yet. More on that later.

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