Cutting Board – Viewer Project
This week’s project is submitted by Andre. Let’s check it out:
“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.”
The Mother Of All Cutting Boards – Project of the Week
This week’s project comes from Ed. He writes:
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.
7- A Cut Above (Pt. 2)
High Resolution Version
Purchase the DVD
In Part 2 of our cutting board series, I show you two of the most popular ways to finish cutting boards, or any wooden kitchen item for that matter. I also review the care and maintenance required for each finish type.
Having trouble finding materials for this project? Check this out!
A DVD of this project is available in our store. Purchase your copy today!
7- A Cut Above (Pt. 1)
High Resolution Version
Purchase the DVD
One of my favorite woodworking projects is a butcher block end-grain cutting board. Im not sure if its the “back to basics” simplicity or just the fact that it is one of the most useful projects a woodworker can make, but something keeps bringing me back for more. A custom cutting board makes a great gift and many woodworkers make them in batches every Holiday Season. And if you are relatively new to woodworking, this is a great project to hone your milling, glue-up and tablesaw skills. In Part 1 of this two part series, we cover the preparation and construction of the board itself. I hope you enjoy this project as much as I do.
***New Plan!!*** We finally have a plan available for the cutting board. The plan was made by my good friend (and a heck of a woodworker), Ron Jones. You can download the plan as a pdf here: Cutting Board Plan.
Having trouble finding materials for this project? Check this out!
A DVD of this project is available in our store. Purchase your copy today!
Check it Out!
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