End Grain Cutting Board

[MBG]

Many may have seen this in a recent Wood magazine. Completed mine last weekend. It was a relatively "fun" project:




Do you think I need to add feet to one side (like the magazine has)?

Thanks,

Mike

[mschrank]

Do you think I need to add feet to one side (like the magazine has)?

Thanks,

Mike

If this beautiful project will actually be used as a working cutting board, I wouldn't add feet. As a cook, I reserve one side of the board for meat and the other for cutting non-meat items. Sometimes, if I haven't planned well and I'm in a hurry, I have to cut up some veggies after contaminating one side of the board with raw meat, I'll flip the board over to minimize cross-contamination.

[SHADOWFOX]

Beautiful work, Mike!! Me birthday is coming up soon, I can PMyou my address so that you can ship it to me

[ChrisD]

Beautiful work, Mike!! Me birthday is coming up soon, I can PMyou my address so that you can ship it to me

Mike, I'm in Chicago and definitely closer to you than that other Chris D! I can even pick it up!

Beautiful work, man. I love the swirl patterns created by the end grain. I stopped my WOOD subscription several months ago: what woods and finish did you use?

[John Hunter]

Very nice!

[TheRic]

Wait a miniute that looks like the picture in the magazine, hmmm I wonder if all you did was cut it out and scan it.

Looks great!! Looks a little larger than the magazine one (going from memory). What are the dimensions?? How much does it weigh? Ditto on what kind of wood did you use?

[dlminehart]

You could attach 4 of those little press-on plastic buttons. Inconspicuous, allowing you to use the other side if necessary, but would perhaps add some resistance to movement. If you found them troublesome, you can just pop 'em off.

[GeekMom]

Beautiful, Mike! Personally, I would nix the feet. They do nothing but get in my way.

[MBG]

Beautiful work, Mike!! Me birthday is coming up soon, I can PMyou my address so that you can ship it to me

Actually my wife's 50th is this Wed. so guess one thing she is getting.

I love the swirl patterns created by the end grain. I stopped my WOOD subscription several months ago: what woods and finish did you use?

I used hard maple, walnut, and cherry like the mag. suggested, but, I guess you could use other contrasting woods. I used mineral oil for the finish

Looks great!! Looks a little larger than the magazine one (going from memory). What are the dimensions?? How much does it weigh? Ditto on what kind of wood did you use?

I guess it weighs about 4-5#. It's 11"wide x 15-1/2" long x 1-1/8" thick. After I did the first glue-up and removed the excess glue I was able to clean the slab to about 0.72" thick. The magazine said to bring it down to 0.50" but I just couldn't. So my proportions may be different than the magazine they used 24 pieces and I used 21 (but have the same length).

I also got to use my "new to me" Performax 10-20 on this project. I like when the instructions suggest to run trials on scrap wood. Who has an 1-1/4x11x15 slab of scrap hardwood? Well, good thing it was thick because I learned a few things working this slab:

1) Since the dimensions were larger than 10" I had to use a double pass. I discovered that you should try to sand as close to 1/2 the width on both passes to reduce the chance of sanding a ridge in the board (the sander is set-up such that the free end of the drum it slightly higher than the side towards the motor).

2) Don't run this hard of wood at too slow of a feed rate or you will get burn marks.

3) Set the drum so it just touches the wood or you will probably trip the over-load breaker.

4) One sort of disappointment was that even after using 220 grit the sander left noticable lines in the board. I found this is common especially in end grain sanding. So be prepared to take the ROS to it. (I did run some oak through it and there were no noticable sanding lines.)

5) For anything larger than the size of this slab you really need in/out feed supports. Preformax sells them but they are expensive and worst of all they are fixed (don't fold-up).


(hope this helps drum sander newbies)

[Pappy]

Almost too pretty to use, Mike.

[lrogers]

No almost about it, it is too pretty to use. Very, very nice.

[jhart]

That's really slick looking, Mike

[Ken Massingale]

Looks better than the one in the mag Mike.
ken

[mater]

Beautiful work Mike. It is nice.

[Wood_workur]

I love it, don't add feet