The Mother Of All Cutting Boards - Project of the Week

April 10, 2008 | Filed Under Blog, Project of the Week 

This week’s project comes from Ed. He writes:

dscf2342.jpgI 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.

Butcher Block Counter Top Butcher Block Counter Top

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.

CNC MachineThen 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.

CNC Machine CNC Machine

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.

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Comments

8 Responses to “The Mother Of All Cutting Boards - Project of the Week”

  1. firefytrdan on April 11th, 2008 8:24 am

    Wow! I love how that turned out. I’ve been wanting do a butcher block top for my kitchen island. Now I have been inspired. Thanks!

  2. Claude Stewart on April 11th, 2008 8:33 am

    Wow 2 1/2 gal. of glue I use that about every 5 years.

  3. Kyle on April 11th, 2008 8:51 am

    is that 300,000 lbs a typo? that seems a little heavy. i think those cabinets would be crumbling under that much weight.

  4. Daniel on April 11th, 2008 11:14 am

    If he got quoted $3000 from a pro, then what was the final cost of himdoing it himself? I bet after the installation was finished it was about the same.

  5. Kevin on April 11th, 2008 6:48 pm

    Your Ginormous 3 bazillian pound cutting board came out GREAT!

  6. Vic on April 12th, 2008 7:12 am

    That’s a very cool countertop! It helps to have friends with the really big ticket machine, huh?! I can’t imagine the work to level that top with out the CNC router.

  7. Rob on April 12th, 2008 8:54 am

    In the end who cares what it cost. You get to say to yourself I built that for my wife. It’s also a good way to justify all the tools you’ve bought & are going to buy. Nice work Ed.

  8. Ed on April 13th, 2008 4:04 pm

    Ed here. Materials and a nice tip for my buddy with the router came in at about a thousand bucks even. (Of course, I used the project as an excuse to buy a couple of new tools…)

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