The Edge Grain Cutting Board

As I flip through Facebook, the woodworking forums are very active with people making cutting boards, particularly in the months leading up to Christmas. Handmade cutting boards are a great, attractive gift that can be tailored to the wood you have available and the size of board you want to give. I had a thought to make one, and if it was successful, I would give it as a gift to my in-laws. After all, it was my father-in-law that gave me the router that I have been using. It would be my first attempt at using hardwoods and making anything attractive like that, so I needed a backup plan - if the result was ugly, I would keep it in my own kitchen and the in-laws would get a gift card or a candle!

This would require a lot of everything. I needed lessons on how to make cutting boards. I needed some hardwood from the specialty wood shop. I needed a way to level-out the boards once they were glued, and a way to make a juice-groove around the board. I also needed the right kind of wood glue and finishing materials (mineral oil and beeswax). There were other things I needed that I didn't even know I needed yet.

I started by drawing up a plan. I didn't need a special application, as I was just arranging rectangles of different sizes. I did need the dimensions to be correct though - so I used what was available and easy for me - MS PowerPoint on my office computer. It can be used to make designs with exact dimensions. I set the page size to the size of my intended cutting board, and made long rectangles with the exact sizes of strips of hardwood. I searched Google for images of different hardwoods that looked nice for cutting boards, in this case I used Yellow Heart, Purple Heart and Padauk. Using those graphics, I filled the rectangles with the image and that gave me a pretty good idea of how the design would look.

This is the image I made in PowerPoint with the dimensions I intended. I think it matches the end result fairly well.

Once I knew what I wanted to make, I needed to buy the wood. The WoodSource in the south end of Ottawa is the place I have been going for nice hardwoods. You can't get this type of wood from Home Depot. I knew the wood would be expensive, but I was surprised by how expensive it was. A single 4ft board was almost $35 CAD, and I needed 1 of each type. Fortunately though, I still have half of each board left after the project. I bought the wood and some TiteBond3, which is the most popular wood glue for food grade woodworking. I was also surprised by the weight of the wood while loading the van!

Once I got the wood home, the anxiety kicked in. The wood was expensive, and I did not have all the tools that are typically used for this type of work, namely a table saw and planer. I would need to 'make do' with my circular saw, mitre saw and sander. Mistakes would be expensive and difficult to recover from. The challenge was cutting the boards perfectly straight, and then getting all the various pieces to be the same thickness. Once I started cutting the boards and making the desired strips, I noticed another thing my workspace was lacking - dust collection. The dust was much more apparent with this project than others - probably because it looked like a unicorn exploded. Bright yellow, red and purple saw dust was accumulating on every surface in the garage. I was, and still am, very lucky that my wife was not terribly bothered by all our storage bins and other things being covered in saw dust. She was not impressed by her expensive e-bike being covered though, and requested that it be covered in a tarp for the winter. Eventually, I would cover it.

The longer pieces that had been cut not only had rough edges, but they weren't the same height. My buddy from work has a thickness planer, so he agreed to help me out and run my boards through his planer to get the thickness of the boards all the same. It worked beautifully and now all the pieces were the same thickness. (Thanks Mike!) I chopped them into smaller strips and assembled the board, as shown below.

The boards have been cut and were ready to be glued.

When the pieces were about to be glued, I needed to be prepared, because once the glue is on, there is no turning back. I needed to not only press the strips together tightly, I also needed to keep them level as they were squeezed. I had read online about the strips slipping on glue-ups and didn't want that to happen. I took 4 pieces of scrap wood that were the length of the board and wrapped them in clear packing tape. I would then use them to sandwich the ends of the strips between clamps, keeping them all flat. The clear packing tape kept the glue from sticking to the scraps.

At this point, the only clamps I had were some short F style clamps, and one very long (4ft) clamp. I would use some of the clamps and hook them to another so that short clamps can reach the other end of the board. It was frustrating, but it was all could do with the clamps I had. It worked though. This photo is after the glue dried for 16hrs. All this glue squeeze-out would need to be sanded off.

Once the glue dries...

....the sanding begins.

I used my sander to get rid of the glue that squeezed out. I affixed the board to my workbench using some scrap wood all around. This allowed me to sand everywhere evenly, without any clamps in the way. I would then flip it over and do the other side. Once the sanding was done, another issue became apparent. Gaps.

I had only used Mike's planer to get the board thickness the same (using the planer on the face of the boards). Once I cut them into smaller strips, the inside edges were not as even as I thought, and that showed up after gluing. There were spaces that the glue didn't fill. That can't be ignored on a cutting board, because the space will hold food and bacteria. I had heard about the technique of mixing glue and sawdust to fill gaps. I had done it on my Harmony Bench and it worked well. The sawdust provides some structure for the glue and helps thicken it while you press it into the spaces. In this particular instance though, if I used any random sawdust from my dust bin, it would stand out too much. I had an idea. I took some of my left over woods from the cutting board, and I sanded them separately. My sander has a vacuum that catches the sawdust in a little bag. I emptied the bag after sanding the Padauk, and I had a nice little pile of red sawdust. I did the same with the Yellow Heart and the Purple Heart. The result is shown below. 

Segregated sawdust

With this sawdust, I would then mix it with the glue and make a thick paste that would match the neighbouring wood. If the chip or chunk was more on the Yellow Heart side, I would use that sawdust in the mixture. It worked beautifully. I don't have a photo of it, but I can say that the gaps are filled and indistinguishable from the neighbouring wood. This is a tip that I recommend to anyone doing any kind of decorative work where the gaps and spaces in wood cannot remain.

After the cutting board was smooth, I decided to include a juice-groove around one surface of the board. I picked my favourite side of the board and picked the placement of the groove. I had seen videos of folks making jigs for using a router to make a juice-groove hand held, but it looked a bit complicated and not quite precise enough for me. I didn't have a router table that could be used for this work, so I built one! I came up with another project, in the middle of a project.... 

I didn't have any more room in my garage for a new router table installation, so I came up with one that would clamp on to the side of my work bench, and could be removed when the work was done. I didn't design the plans for this, but I cannot find the source of this design. Once I find it, I will add a link. I did have to make a few adjustments for my situation. One adjustment was the small 2x4 that sticks back under the workbench because the legs are so far in. This setup has an adjustable fence to slide the workpiece against, and a slot in the back of the fence to attach my hose for the vacuum. I ran a few test pieces without the vacuum, and the space around the router filled up really quick. The dust collection was needed. In the photos below, you can see a clamp on the far left. That is holding the router table against my workbench. After this project, I would buy some large toggle clamps that would sit in the middle of my workbench and would hold the router table from there, rather than the F clamps at the side of the workbench. This added a whole day to my cutting board project, but I have used this removeable router table many times since. 

Removeable router table made from scraps

Now that I had the router table built, I was ready to use it with the cutting board. I tested the setup with some scrap pieces, so I could get comfortable with it. Once I was happy with the shape the router bits were giving, I started with a simple round-over on the edges of the board. 

Round-over edge on the cutting board, with some burn marks on the edge

What is clear on this is that the router is leaving dark marks on the wood. I had no idea why, and sanding didn't work very well to get it off. I would later learn that the dark spots are actually burns from the router. I was moving the wood too slow and it was burning the wood. I only learned this weeks after I had completed the project.

Next, I would put in the juice-groove. This was scary. If I didn't measure correctly, I would mess up the board and would not be able to recover. It involved measuring how far back the fence would need to be, and how far over I would slide the board both directions to make the groove along the whole board. This whole cutting action is happening blind, as the board lays on top of the router bit. I followed the instructions from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4jONt56Jg0

With that guide, I was able to make the groove and it worked perfectly, as you can see in the final photos. Again, there were some dark patches, mostly in the purple heart, where the router bit burned the wood. I believe it is caused by me not moving the board fast enough along the router. Lesson learned.

I sanded the whole board down to get all the edges smooth. Then I 'raised the grain'. That is when you wipe the board with water, which will cause the wood grain to swell and rise up. This needs to be done so that they don't raise during use later on. So the grain is raised, then sanded smooth. 

The board was done and just needed to be 'finished'. That is adding the finish coat to seal the board and keep out excess moisture and bacteria. Mineral oil is the most popular choice for this. The oil keeps the wood from drying out also, which will prevent cracking. With the right care, it should last many years. I wiped it down with a liberal coating of oil, while laying it inside a cookie sheet to catch the drips. I let the oil sit on the board over night. The next morning, the wood almost appeared dry! It soaked up so much of the oil - I was amazed. I then applied another coat of oil and let it sit overnight. The third coat of finish was a mixture of oil and bees wax. I bought the wax at a health food store for a reasonable price. I heated the oil in a pot and melted in the beeswax at a ratio of 3 parts oil to 1 part wax. Once the wax was melted, I poured it into a container to cool off and somewhat solidify. That made an oily waxy paste that could be smeared onto the board. The wax smelled wonderful. I left it on the board overnight and the wood sucked up the oil and left much of the wax on the surface. That was buffed down and I was done!

I added rubber feet to the bottom of the board to give it a good stable....footing.

This was by far my longest project, and it had many side projects along the way. I learned a lot, which i used in my next cutting board project.

The final dimensions were 17.5" by 11.75" by .75" thick.

Completed November 27, 2020

Mineral Oil and Beeswax paste being applied

How it looked when packaged up

Final appearance of the board 6 weeks after completion.