COWW Posted October 16, 2010 Report Share Posted October 16, 2010 I'm in the process of building five of the TWW End Grain Cutting Boards of hard maple and cherry for family christmas presents. I'm a fairly "hybrid" woodworker. When it comes to milling lumber, I do all my flattening with hand planes, thicknessing with my dw735 thickness planer. Crosscutting I usually do with a handsaw, but ripping I usually use my table saw, which worked very nicely on this project for cutting many pieces of consistent width. Anyway, it seems this project is all about milling, the main thing to keep in mind is that all the pieces need to be absolutely flat and square at every step of the process. It was good practice for flattening boards by hand. Now that I'm finished with the final glue-up (the cutting boards are in their final "end-grain" position I went to do the final flattening the last couple evenings, that's when the real "fun" began. I just wanted to make sure all the seams were even and the board was relatively flat. Thinking that hand planing was going to be too hard for this much end grain I decided to go after it with a ROS with 80grit. After 30min of sanding I still hadn't finished one side of the first board! At this point I decided a re-assessment was in order. I pulled out my LN LA Jack I sharpened the blade and went to work planing toward the center of the board from all directions to avoid blowing out the edges. Yikes that's a lot like work! but after 20min I had both endgrain sides of the first board (18"x12") flat. BTW, It is very cool to see a pile of endgrain shavings in a cherry/maple checkeboard pattern . I finished all the flattening the last of the cutting boards last night, the boards still needed to be sanded as my plane left some "plane tracks", but the sanding is WAY easier now, just to remove these plane tracks than it was trying to actually flatten with the ROS (now only about 5min per board). Today, I hope to cut the finger holds, juice tracks, round the edges and get the first coat of finish on the boards. I'll post pictures of the finished boards when I'm done. Have a great weekend! Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chopnhack Posted October 17, 2010 Report Share Posted October 17, 2010 Very cool! Can't wait to see pics! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
COWW Posted November 14, 2010 Author Report Share Posted November 14, 2010 Picture of the cutting boards, as promised. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlloydparks Posted November 14, 2010 Report Share Posted November 14, 2010 Great job. They look awesome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
susieq4131 Posted November 15, 2010 Report Share Posted November 15, 2010 Those are just stunning! Beautiful job. I plan to make an end grain cutting board as soon as I get a drum sander. SQ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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