“Hi Marc! Long time listener, first time writer. First of all, I just wanted to say what a great job you do. Your videos and blog are absolutely informative and easy to follow for an amateur woodworker such as myself. I look forward to everything you put out. I just started putting together my basement shop late last summer. In fact the sole reason why I got started in woodworking was because I got hooked after watching your cutting board video (and promptly watched the rest of your videos), so many thanks to you! Since then I have engulfed myself with as much woodworking text as I can. After building an end table and some shop furniture, I actually got around to making my first cutting board based on your design. I attached a picture of it for your information, finished according to your videos. I really liked how it turned out.”

“Anyway, I wanted to try out new designs so I tapped into some of my limited programming background that I have and made a program in Visual Basic (I deemed it, CBdesigner) that lets you virtually design a cutting board in a matter of minutes by defining each layer. Also attached is a picture of the program showing your own design to illustrate how it works. I made a shout out to you in the program (I’m sure you can recognize it). I posted it at Lumberjocks to see what other people thought of it. I’ve been doing some small updates to the program based on people’s recommendations. I know you’re Mr. Apple so I’m not sure if it can run on your Mac, but I just thought you might be interested in it too. :) Not sure if a program qualifies as project of the week or not but I thought I’ll let you know know about it.”

“My wife, Jen and I were recently married in a beautiful park in Manotick, Ontario, Canada (we’re from Ottawa). I wanted to make something for my parents as a thank you for all their help. When I saw the sorry state of their flexible cutting mat I knew exactly what to make. I found a picture of a great end grain cutting board online and adapted it slightly. I used maple for most of it, jatoba for the vertical loop, walnut for the horizontal one and cherry for the square and corners. I routed a juice groove on one side and handles on the edges. I finished it with three coats of General Finishes Salad Bowl Finish and two coats of salad bowl wax. The only problem I had was the lack of a drum sander, luckily my local lumber yard has one. It cost me $30 to get them to thickness it for me. It took me about 2 months working a couple of hours every other night after work. My mom says she likes it so much she doesn’t want to use it… duh!!! Hope you enjoy the pics.”

“Here are pictures of two of my completed Christmas projects. The chessboard is made out of maple and walnut for the playing surface, and the frame is cherry. The cutting board is maple and mahogany. On the cutting boards I used mineral oil only, three coats. On the chessboard, I used three coats of water-based varnish, with a light sanding between coats. I did not raise the grain first, I just de-whiskered after the first coat of varnish using a 220 grit sandpaper. I find this method gives the results I look for more rapidly than raising the grain. Still more to come, mainly picture frames.”

Here’s what Jarred had to say:

I teach a shop class in rural Wisconsin, and took the initiative to introduce the boys to The Wood Whisperer (someone younger and cooler than me). I walked them through the cutting board project, but showing them your videos. Every time I fired up the laptop they would in unison say, “Let’s get ready to make a cutting board!” Anyway, here’s a picture of a few of them and their cutting boards: combinations of walnut, maple, and purpleheart. The boys had fun with the project and gave the cutting boards as gifts for Mother’s Day.

Well, I have finally grown a skin thick enough to submit 3 project pictures of an end grain butcher block cabinet that I made for my parents recently. It just got shipped out to Singapore; cost me $800 for the freight!! I got the inspiration by watching you build your cutting boards, and have made up to about 20 so far. It’s a great way to use up scrap wood!!! Saw David Marks’ version on his woodworks show that day and thought that it would be an interesting challenge to build one. The top is larger than David’s design; it’s about 3 feet wide by 2 feet deep – a nice size for a single person to work at, and just enough counter space. You are probably wondering why I would put a semi-gloss finish on the top? Well, my parents want it as a piece for a corner in the house, so I thought I would spend a little time practicing my varnishing skills for a semi-gloss look.

I used 7 types of wood on it – purpleheart, black walnut, yellowheart, ash, mahoganey, jatoba, maple and cherry. Flattening the top was a major pain!! I have a 22-44 performax drum sander, but still had to use router rails to slowly but surely flatten one side before drum sanding the other. Touched it up with a Lie-Nielsen 7 1/2 bevel up jointer plane. The face frame is made of purpleheart (a major pain to plane, I might add), and the drawer fronts are made of ambrosia maple. Made a little effort to match the grain on the drawers + doors as well. The cabinet is finished with shellac (3 coats) via my Apollo HVLP spray unit, and rubbed out to a satin sheen with Howard’s feed n wax.

And yes, I did use casters – double locking ones – they put a strong brake on the wheel plus a lock on the swivel. They actually cost about $20 a piece from Linco Casters at Clairemont Mesa Blvd (next to the San Diego Rockler); They really do look a little utilitarian, but those were the best I could find in terms of durability and stability. Those red shop-grade ones at woodcraft were too tacky for my taste. All in all, it was tiring; but I have to give you the credit for the original inspiration via the cutting board! THANKS

I just finished the Mother of All Boards…MOAB, we’re calling it…and here are the post-install pictures. My wife’s a gourmet cook and we built her a new kitchen. We used stock cabinetry and some granite on the sink-side, but she wanted a run of end-grain walnut butcher-block countertops on the stove-side of the operation. About forty square feet, I think. I got a $3,000 quote, thought “that’s ridiculous,’ and…well, you’re a bright guy, you know all about that particular road to hell. Actually, it was kind of fun. Scratching around for notes on technique was what led me to your site. I found (and enjoyed) your cutting board video and decided to adapt your technique.

Here’s a run-down of my process:

1) Mill out a bunch of 19″L X 1″H X 2″W pieces (my hardwood supply’s 4/4 is actually about 9/8)
2) Mill out a second bunch of 19″L X 1″H X 1″W pieces
3) Join one 1″W piece to 5 2″W pieces, making an edge-grain board
4) Thickness plane these edge-grain boards to about 15/16
5) Slice the edge-grain boards to 2 1/16″ (each board yields about 8
slices of end-grain)
6) Join the end-grain into tiles, alternating the 1″W piece from left
to right to yield a checkerboard
7) Square the tiles and join them into larger blanks (or a big hollow
square, in the case of the cooktop insert) in a pipe-clamp press.

Then came the conundrum. There are four big blanks in these countertops, and I knew that thicknessing them was going to be a pain. My first thought was a 36″ drum sander, but I wound up going to my buddy’s high-end mantel shop, http://mantelsofyesteryear.com, and using his CNC router instead because I was worried about scorching and snipe on the sander. The CNC routing was really interesting. We spent a Saturday thicknessing and dimensioning these things, and the end result was a set of blanks that were precisely squared, dimensioned, and rounded over on the edges.

Vital stats. These countertops are 1 7/8″ thick. I used about 130 BF of walnut and 2 1/2 gallons of Titebond III. They’re finished with food-grade mineral oil. And they weigh about three hundred thousand pounds! I couldn’t have done this project without Jet parallel-jaw clamps or a Freud crosscutting blade. Or without the Wood Whisperer, for that matter…thinking through your process was what made me see that there was larger potential. So thanks again.