The End Grain cutting board
After completing the edge-grain cutting board, I decided to try something more complicated. End-grain cutting boards are more difficult, because there is more room for error, and the slightest misalignment will show up very clearly, and usually only after the glue has dried. Much of the process is the same as with an edge-grain, so I thought I could do it. I had learned a lot on the previous project, so I headed back to the WoodSource store to get some nice hardwood.
This wood would need to be twice as thick as the previous boards, because I had a goal of making a checkerboard pattern with squares, and a thicker board. I didn't want the squares to be small, so my wood needed to be about 2" thick. I chose Padauk and Purple Heart. I bought Brazilian Walnut also, which can be used for another project later.
At this stage, my equipment was still a bit limited. I had:
- circular saw
- drill and driver
- sliding compound mitre saw
- router
Cutting boards are really dependent on the wood being perfectly flat. End-grain cutting boards more so, because when the pieces are stacked on their ends, the misalignments become apparent. I didn't want to continue to be dependent on a buddy living across town to use his planer. So, I bought myself an early Christmas present, a planer. Due to the increase in home hobby participation brought on by Covid-19, woodworking stores were quick to sell out of equipment like planers and table saws. The planer I really wanted was on sale at Home Depot, but was sold out across Canada. I had an alternative that I had researched and it had good reviews, but it was also sold out from all stores in Eastern Ontario. In the end, I bought the Wen 6550T 12.5" planer which was available from Amazon. It was nerve wracking for that giant, expensive box to be delivered and left unattended on my driveway, as it was delivered while the whole family were away from the house for a couple hours. Luckily, the porch pirates missed our street that day!
I used a free application to help design the cutting board. I needed to know all the thicknesses of the boards, and lengths of the boards - and this application gave that info.
It's pretty simple to use, and it is very customizable. It didn't have the woods I needed by default, so I added them and gave them appropriate colours. I specified the dimensions I wanted and was able to come up with a cutting plan. I used my circular saw to cut the strips of wood from the long boards. After that, I ran them through the planer to slowly mill them down to the sizes I wanted.
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| The remainder of the original board above, with the strips that are cut from it below. |
Once they were all the same width, I needed to glue them. My clamping from the previous cutting board was a bit frustrating. The clamps weren't long enough. I decided to buy some pipe clamps. They are simply pipes with clamps that slide over the ends. The advantage with them is that they can be as long as your pipe. Need a longer clamp? Buy a longer 3/4" pipe! I bought a few and it allowed me press all the boards together with Titebond3 wood glue.
The garage that I use for woodworking was getting cold at night, which is not good for glue to dry in, so I brought the whole contraption with the clamps into the dining room over night. Luckily, my cat wasn't interested in laying on it when it was drying on the floor.
Once the glue dried, I put the glued set through the planer. You can see in the pic below that the long boards are not the same height. I didn't bother getting them the same height before gluing, because I knew I would need to run them through the planer after anyways (to make a perfect surface, and to remove any glue that squeezed out).
I used my mitre saw to cut 2" strips of glued boards. My sliding mitre saw can just barely reach the across all the glued boards. A table saw would really have come in handy. I actually limited the size of the cutting board so that it wouldn't be larger than what my mitre saw could cut (11"). The bottom portion of the pic shows the 2" strip that was cut. It is smooth on top from being run through the planer, and the sides are even after being cut by the saw. I cut as many strips as would fit from the slab.
The cuts are smooth and perfect for joining. The width of the cuts represent the height of the cutting board, accounting for some removal of wood after I completed the next glue-up and smoothing of the surface. The expectation is that the final cutting board would be about 1.75" thick.
The next step after cutting those strips was to turn them on their side. This would make the end grain face up. Then, I would flip every other strip over, which would make a checkerboard pattern. They were all aligned carefully so that the edges of all the squares lined up. I was happy with how they were fitting, so I glued them and clamped them tight overnight.
The next day, I did some research into something taboo in woodworking - planing edge grain cutting boards! The general rule for planers is NOT to plan edge grain. The spinning blades inside a planer will catch the edges of end grain boards, and not be able to cut them - instead they are crunched backwards and shot out of the planer at the speed of the spinning blades. My planer spins at 18,000 RPM. That is really really fast. There are videos online that discuss the ways to plane an end-grain cutting board (with a disclaimer before the video). It was very tempting to try, to get all the strips levelled out to an even height. I did it. I put the board through a couple times with a very slight touch of the blades. On the third pass, the blades caught the edge and shot the board out backwards faster than I could see. It flew across the room and smashed into my wife's e-bike under the tarp (don't tell her). I almost shit my pants. Luckily, I was standing beside the planer and not behind it. I have heard tales of people being badly hurt by standing behind a planer when it decided to kickback. The planer took a chunk out of the surface of the cutting board, almost 1/4" deep. Surely that was a fluke - I must have done something wrong when I laid the board down - so I tried again. It went though a couple times, removing a small amount of wood each time. Then the kickback happened again. I'm done. It was doing damage to my cutting board when this happened, so I couldn't afford to do this anymore.
I inspected the planer and took the blades off - to ensure this didn't affect more than just the board. Luckily, only the wood was damaged, the planer and it's blades were fine. I put the planer aside and made a Router sled. That is a jig that allows a router to slide across your material surface and remove a small amount of material. The router doesn't actually sit on the board, but sits on a sled that is positioned above the cutting board. The planer also doesn't care which direction the wood grain is facing. I built it and was able to remove any trace of the kickback chunks in the board. That being said, removing the damaged surface did result in the board being thinner than I intended.
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| An example of a Router Sled (not mine). https://www.littleloveliesbyallison.com/homemade-router-sled-plans |
The result was a cutting board that was perfectly flat on both sides. It needed to have the edges rounded-over, so I put my router back into the router table, and gave the board a small round-over edge. Next step was sanding. End-grain is very strong, so the sanding took a while to make it super smooth.
After the board was all smooth, I followed the same finishing steps as the edge-grain cutting board:
- raise the grain with a wet cloth
- sand it with 220 grit sandpaper
- oil it with mineral oil wiped on over night
- finish with oil/beeswax mixture paste
- buff it the next morning
The result was a really nice cutting board, with lots of heft and colour. This project taught me a lot of things to do and not to do. I learned respect for the big machines also.
Final dimensions are 12" x 7.8" and 1.4" thick.
Those are the photos that my wife took before the board was packed up and shipped to my parents for their Christmas gifts. The photos were taken outside and appear very red in hue, even though the purple heart wood was very clear in person.
After it had been received and opened, my parents sent me a photo of how it looked a few weeks later. I was crushed. The colours from the padauk had bled though the oil and were staining the purple heart. I looked online and apparently it is common! I had no idea. I would have chosen different woods if I thought the colours would run. I'll take another photo of the board once I'm able to see it in person (after Covid ends and family can visit again). The board is still attractive, but not what I thought it would look like a few weeks later. What's interesting is that the padauk isn't bleeding on the edge-grain board. I guess the end-grain with padauk is the difference. Lesson learned.
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