# Hard maple, birdseye maple, cherry and walnut end grain cutting board



## nmacdonald (Jan 13, 2012)

Just finishing this off now. I decided that I would make my parents an endgrain cutting board for Christmas this year. 

Here is sort of a build process that I went through my lumber to pick some pieces that I'd like to use. Walnut and maple pictured. 










Unfortunately, the maple, which I have a lot of; is slim picking for decent pieces as there is some rot where they were stacked during drying and some worm? holes in a lot of the pieces. 

When I bought my drum sander, the guy gave me a local guys phone number who carries a number of different types of woods. I contacted him and was able to get some pieces of cherry from him. A number of cut offs which worked out well for making the cutting board for free, and a larger 3x3"x12' piece for $10.

So after jointing and planning my pieces down to sizes and cutting random width strips, I glued them up.










The thickness at this point is about 7/8th" but not every piece is the exact same as I know during my glue up they will not end up lining up perfectly.

With a goal of having the cutting board be about 11x15", I needed up making two different glue ups , as the free cherry I received was not long enough to give me enough pieces to get my 15" length of board. I had to account for some pieces not working out in cutting the final strips due to knots in the wood.











I don't have the glue up down to a perfect science yet, as I think I used way too much glue based on the amount of squeeze out, but I don't want to miss anything, lol.

I try to keep one side as flat as possible as to plane down the uneven side first then flip over once it is flat.

I try to keep any knots in a line if possible, and leave some long so snipe going through the planner will affect only the waste area and not a good piece for the cutting board.



















Once that was finished with both of my glue ups, I then cut each one into strips, 1 7/8th" wide. At this point 1 glue up was 3/4" thick and the other was closer to 11/16"











I knew to get my 15" length of board that I would need about 21 pieces. 15/.75=20 rounded up to 21 to account for the thinner pieces.

Now it's time to play with the patterns.










For those of you new to endgrain cutting boards, every second piece is basically flipped end for end.




























So after May arrangements, I finally came up with one I liked. 

So... Once again, another glue up.










The next day after it dried a full 24 hours, I used a sled sort of thing to route off the excess glue and get it to a level playing field. I was able to shim up where I needed then used a flat bottom router bit to slowly get it level.










It seems to work pretty good with minimal tear out as long as you only remove a little material at a time 1/16th"


Before routing









After routing
But not up to close, sorry about that.









So after that I put it through my drum sander, actually my first project to be used with it. I ran a scrap piece of wood through it a couple times just to get a feel for it though.

Really impressed with it



















Once that was finished, I went through the grits with a hand sander to remove some sanding lines, working through 220grit.

I then cut the edges off to square it up nicely and ran in across the router table with a 3/16 round over to ease the edges.

The used 3 grits of sand paper upto 220 on edges.

And lastly, I'm in the process of using Kenbo's mineral oil/wax combo to treat it



















It'll be many coats until I wrap it for Christmas, and hopefully many more over the years to come.

Hope you enjoyed, and have a great Christmas


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## mengtian (Nov 8, 2012)

Very nice...I need to make one someday


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## nmacdonald (Jan 13, 2012)

Here is a very quick video running the cutting board through the drum sander.

http://youtu.be/-qDn1EQNg_Y


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## hwebb99 (Nov 27, 2012)

Drum sanders are sweet. I have made about 15 cutting boards this Christmas. I flattened them all with my drum sander. Btw if you had a drum sander why did you use a planer to flatten the first glue up, and router sled to flatten the second?


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## difalkner (Nov 27, 2011)

Very nice cutting board and nice build photos (how'd you get 18 photos in one post???). I need to make a few of that size and will probably refer to this several times. Thanks for the 'how to'!

We made small 28 cutting boards this year with a slightly different process but still fun to do - http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f13/build-thread-small-cutting-boards-66624/


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## nmacdonald (Jan 13, 2012)

hwebb99 said:


> Drum sanders are sweet. I have made about 15 cutting boards this Christmas. I flattened them all with my drum sander. Btw if you had a drum sander why did you use a planer to flatten the first glue up, and router sled to flatten the second?


First time using the sander so I did not want to gum up the sandpaper with glue squeeze out and only have 120g and 150g so not going to be as smooth as having run it through the planner


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## nmacdonald (Jan 13, 2012)

difalkner said:


> Very nice cutting board and nice build photos (how'd you get 18 photos in one post???). I need to make a few of that size and will probably refer to this several times. Thanks for the 'how to'! We made small 28 cutting boards this year with a slightly different process but still fun to do - http://www.woodworkingtalk.com/f13/build-thread-small-cutting-boards-66624/


 Lol. I knew never it wasn't possible. I used the iPad app and uploaded a photo when I wanted it to appear by hitting advanced, upload from photos; then once uploaded, hit the arrow on right side of picture and hit insert inline. Awesome job on the 28 boards, they turned out great


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## difalkner (Nov 27, 2011)

nmacdonald said:


> Lol. I knew never it wasn't possible. I used the iPad app and uploaded a photo when I wanted it to appear by hitting advanced, upload from photos; then once uploaded, hit the arrow on right side of picture and hit insert inline. Awesome job on the 28 boards, they turned out great


Thanks, it was a fun build. 

I post from my computer and 5 photos is all I can post at a time unless I link to photos stored somewhere else. Oh, well, just curious.


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## Masterjer (Nov 6, 2012)

Is it just me, or does the pattern look like a weight lifter doing a set of squats?


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## Travico (Dec 25, 2012)

That is a SUPER build and thanks for the info.


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## Bleedinblue (Mar 4, 2014)

They look awesome, nice job.


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## Chamfer (Sep 6, 2014)

Nice chop board you got there!


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