That’s right folks, another one! I’m churning these things out now, I’ve really got the process down. And I got a new tool to help in the process! Thanks wife :). This one is a chevron style cutting board. It’s on the small side at about 10.5 inches long, 6.5 inches wide, and about .75 inches tall. You may be wondering why I’m making these smaller right now. The answer to that is pretty easy, I don’t have large pieces of wood to work with. When I make these end grain cutting boards, they get turned, you guessed it, on their end. So in order to get a taller cutting board, you need wide pieces of wood, around the two inch mark, this gives your more height across the cutting board when you glue it together.
Here some shots of the board coming together.
You know one of my favorite thing about working on these projects is to see what the project looked like at the beginning and compare it to the final product. With this cutting board you can definitely tell a difference! As you are about to see. But before you get to the pictures, I wanted to explain how I get a bunch of pieces of wood together to make it look like it does.
See up until today I was missing two semi important tools to really get a fantastic, perfectly joined cutting board. Today I got one of the two tools I needed, a full thickness planer. What does a planer do? It basically makes two sides of an object parallel each other. So if you have a flat surface on one side, you’ll end up with a flat surface on the other. This cutting board didn’t get that kind of treatment, everything was done purely by hand, and with the use of my table saw to make straight edges.
The other tool I need, and will ultimately get, is a jointer. A jointer will basically take any surface and make it nice and flat. Why is that good? Without a nice flat edge, you can’t really get a good seal/bond on your wood when you go to glue it together (like above). Now I still don’t have a jointer, but I still get my pieces pretty darn close. So how do I do it? Well that’s a great question person reading my blog. I use my table saw! I built some sleds which are basically just platforms, check out the picture below.
I took painstaking efforts when building my sleds to make sure that they were as close to square as I could make them. I’ll grant you they still aren’t 100%, but they are like 98%. So using my sleds, I’m able to control my smaller pieces of wood, and make each edge pretty much perfectly square. So when I place one edge up against the other, you guessed it. It comes out flush. Using my table saw definitely works. But it’s a bit of a pain, especially when you start working with pieces that aren’t square, like the chevron cutting board in the post. So for that particular set up, I had to come up with a rig to assist me in straightening the edges. Again, pretty painstaking, but I love the work, and though it may not be perfect. I’m really proud of it!
Like I said earlier, this one is on the small side, but I think it’s very functional. And can be used as a cutting board, or even a serving dish! I use food grade mineral oil to prep the board, then a butcher block conditioner, and finally a coat of beeswax that I let soak in and then polish up. This cutting board will be for sale on my etsy site (on my main page). As always, let me know what you think! I look forward to hearing from you.
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