I'm getting ready to make a desktop by gluing up thirty 72"H x 1.5"W x .75"D boards of alternating Maple and Mahogany. I'll be gluing the boards on there faces for a final desktop that's ~6' wide and ~1.5" thick.
My original thought was to alternate the direction of the face grain as I glued them up to help prevent warping. Once I get ~12" (16 boards) glued up I want to run it through my planer to level it up perfectly. My concern is that I had a friend tell me to take care when running a board through a planer to take note of the direction of the grain and to make sure the blades were removing material like so:
O -> /////////
Instead of like so:
O -> \\\\\\\\\\
Well if I alternate my grain, I'll have every other board going the wrong way. So do I protect against warp, or use proper planing technicque?