Finishing advice for Tassie oak built-in bench top

[Helmut]

So I have abandoned the idea of using pine panels as a suitable top for my living room built-in, and purchased some of laminated Tassie oak panels. I am planning to join them end to end with a biscuit joiner and glue before attaching them to the cabinets. I will then fill any joins and cracks/defects with hardwood coloured timbermate. To finish it I was going to water down some more timbermate to use as a grain filler before sanding back and staining with a wattyl traditional craftsman stain/dye in teak colour. The final finish will be with 3/coats of minwax water based polyurethane.
Can anyone see any problems with this sequence? Any advice will be appreciated as this is my first woodworking project and I am open to all ideas.
Cheers.

[Master Splinter]

Test your finishing plans on a hidden bit or an offcut to make sure you get the effect you are after (it saves soooo much sanding if it's not quite what you want!).

And think long and hard about a butt join...they can be hard/impossible to do seamlessly, so it's better to make it into some sort of feature - this could be as simple as an inlay covering the butt join, or something as complex as creating a fake 'crack' which is pulled together with butterfly keys.

[ian]

if you are going to stain the top, colour the Timbermate before using it as a grain filler

[Helmut]

Thanks for the replies.
Good advice about testing on a hidden piece first. I'll try it on the underside first. Do you recommend the underside of timber be given a coat of poly at all or is it not needed? Thinking it might help with preventing timber expansion.
The timbermate I have is already tinted to match the Tassie oak. Are you suggesting I add some of wattyl stain to the timbermate prior to grain filling?

[Master Splinter]

Always use the same finish on all surfaces to (hopefully) prevent warping due to uneven moisture loss/gain.

[Helmut]

So I've just finished sanding each Tassie oak board with 180 grit and then grain filled with timbermate. We have decided to forgo the stain and just apply some oil based poly. Can I apply a coat of poly to the boards before gluing them together and filling the gaps with more timbermate then.another 1-2/layers of poly, or should I glue them together, crackfill and then apply the poly?

Cheers.

[ian]

So I've just finished sanding each Tassie oak board with 180 grit and then grain filled with timbermate. We have decided to forgo the stain and just apply some oil based poly. Can I apply a coat of poly to the boards before gluing them together NO
get the edges of teh boards straight and true and then glue them together


and filling the gaps with more timbermate if you've done your edge jointing properly, there will be no gaps