solo1001

Thanks. I found Marc's video soon after i asked the question and that worked on the crack but then there were a couple of glue holes that i patched with glue and sawdust and sanded out. Worked pretty well. I did learn the difference between patching with table sawdust and sander sawdust. Overall it turned out better than my first cutting board and the sapele really showed up well.

This is a bit off-the specific subject of the thread but cutting board related. I did what you said and flipped the thicker pieces over and cut to width and it worked beautifully so thank you. I glued the strips last night with tightbond III and clamped and everything looked good. I came out this morning and there were very tiny gaps in a couple of spots. Couple of questions: I don't want to re-rip and re-glue just because my table saw skills are not up to that kind of precision so I'd most likely do the glue and sawdust patch. How do I mix this as far as amounts? This is a common sense and another one where I wish that side of my brain worked better but should I repair/patch those now and then make the cross cuts or should i cross cut, do my second glue-up and then fix any gaps? If this requires its own thread, please let me know. Incidentally, I got the Grripper and it worked great on the sapele but when pushing the maple through, several times the gripper started sliding along the wood instead of pushing the wood through. Has anyone else ever experienced that?

Thank you. I wish I thought with that side of my brain because when you put it like that it just seems like such common sense.

So I picked up about 6.5 board feet each of 8/4 sapele and hard maple today. He milled it before I got there and I grabbed it and brought it home. Please keep in mind that I am a novice with a couple of projects under my belt but still fairly naive when I ask this: I measured the thickness when I got home and the sapele is 1 11/16 thick and the maple is 1 13/16 thick. I'm trying to make end grain cutting boards. a) don't I need them to be pretty much the same thickness, especially since I have no milling equipment of my own and I'd rather not use a router jig if I can avoid it and can I take that to someone and have them reasonably mill them to even thicknesses? Thank you.

I tried searching but didn't find much so rather than starting a new thread, I figured I'd bring this one back. Is sapele decent for cutting boards as far as being closed grain? I can't find anything that says it's closed grain which means I just don't know the actual words that mean closed grain when researching wood. I have a dealer that is trying to sell me that instead of walnut since it's much cheaper. Any thoughts? Thank you.

Thanks for the responses. Yeah the dealers around here close at 5pm and are not open on the weekends which makes things even crazier. I'm sure as I go along I'll figure out ways around all of this but it's frustrating sometimes learning a hobby on your own. I know it's just a few cutting boards and in woodworking circles they seem like such basic and ubiquitous but man they can impress people really easily when they get one.

Yes, that's the kit I used and I just remember with shipping it was close to $70 and thought if I could figure out how many board feet I needed, I could probably get it cheaper if I were making several. Can I just say I need 6.75 bf of walnut and 6.75 of hard maple both 8/4 surfaced on both faces with a straight edge? I know this gets talked about a lot on these forums and most of the time the responses are that the hardwood dealers are usually happy to talk it out but I've had such a negative experience when I've called so I'm just trying to learn as much as I can.

I apologize for bringing up such an old thread but I'm newer as well and i just cannot grasp board feet. I bought a kit for the cutting board and made it but shipping makes it very expensive and I want to make several for gifts so the kit does not make much sense. Can anyone tell me approximately how many board feet of maple and purple heart he uses? I'm asking here because the hardwood suppliers seemed almost annoyed with me when I tried to get their help when buying wood for the first cutting board, hence the kit. I want to make several cutting boards so hopefully if I come back to them with more precise questions and for enough wood for more than one cutting board they'll be a bit nicer. Clear as mud? Thank you for the help.

Yeah, that's one of those hindsight things. My workbench was my very first project and I made it too tall since I didn't have a table saw yet and then I eyeballed the legs so they weren't even so I added castors and now its even taller. I've learned with every project about what to do and what not to do. I'm making a cutting board and as I screw up, it gets smaller and smaller but darnit it will look like the sweetest small cutting board ever when i get it done. I'm flattening with a router sled and I didn't have the workpiece secure enough after taking a break so a big chunk got taken out of the side. Oh well, slice it off and move forward. Lesson learned.

Thanks everyone. I got the fence square to the blade and made my cuts and I'm good to go. Only tough part is I don't have a dedicated outfeed table so I always go on an adventure stacking things to get table height to take the pieces. Different combo everytime.

Thanks. I have a MicroJig splitter and a big push stick. Just coulnd't make it make sense in my head with it being a square.

Can I safely rip this using the rip fence since its essentially in the shape of a square? If I needed an eight inch piece, would I set my rip fence at 16 inches and push through with the wide side pressed against the fence or would i set the fence at eight and somehow push it through. This question is kind of hard to articulate but I want to do it as safely as possible.

Yeah this thing was about eight feet tall and he opened the doors to check something on the inside and the paper went up over a roller then down then up again. The wood ran along the conveyer. Very neat place to see.

Wound up taking it to a woodcrafter today. I don't know how to describe him except to say his shop was impressive. He sells hardwood so he had a shed full of it and all sorts of power tools. He used some sort of industrial sander. 52" wide belt sander I think is what he calls it on his website. He didn't charge me anything because I stayed for a few minutes and helped him smooth out six huge mahogany slabs. So we got my itty bitty cutting board as flat as we could and now I'll continue my learning process. Maybe some joinery next.

I do not. Since I'm newer to this, that hasn't made it to the must have list that is approved by my wife. I've started the pouting routine so another six months of that and I might be allowed to get one