Milling Stock - Novice

[tesla77]

I ordered the end grain cutting board kit from Bell Forest and have some questions. How do I get to the thickness Mark suggests in his video? (woodwhisperer.com)

He says it needs to be 1 5/8". The boards are currently about 1 3/4". That's very little to cut on a table saw. I don't have a planet or jointer btw.

Thanks!

Jeremy

[Nick2cd]

you can easily do this on your table saw. the safest way to do it is to get a GRR Ripper. it's made by micro jig and it's worth its weight in gold.

however, if i were you, i would leave the material at 1 3/4" (as long as the material is flat and true). the more material you have, the thicker or larger you can make your board. i've made dozens of these boards and have great results with thicker material.

[Boatworks Today]

IMO the thicker the better. I usually make my boards 2.5" thick (at least for the people I like ). It uses a LOT of lumber but the boards are heavy, very stable and there's plenty of meat left if you ever want to refinish them..

[tesla77]

Ok, so maybe the wood is thicker. I measured the thickness with the face up. I need to measure with the edge up, which in this kit varies from 2-8''.

In his videos he refers to them as edge grain. Isn't the edge of the board where they staple the tag at the big box stores? If it were an edge grain board it would then be made of a dozen or so blocks, right?

[Boatworks Today]

The amount of lumber you'll go through really depends on what you want for an overall thickness of the board (finished) and the width of the stock you're working with.. Yes, the big box stores typically staple the tags on the ends (end grain and edge grain are the same thing). If you're working with stock that's up to 8" wide, IMO that's too wide unless the pieces are vertical grain (when you're looking at the end of the piece, the grains are running vertical across the width of the piece). Vertical grain and quarter-sawn are the same thing. (This is starting to turn into the episode that Marc did on lumber lingo; 4/4, 6/4, flat sawn, quartersawn, s2s, etc... ha ha!)

If you're looking at the ends and the grain is running horizontal then that will have a tendency to bow or cup ultimately leading to cracks in the board. When I do mine I usually cut the individual pieces 2" long (which will actually be looked at as the thickness of the board when assembled), 1.5" wide by 3/4 - 1" thick. I'm gonna see if I can attach some pics of a small one I did last year. Don't know how it's gonna work..

I tend to do more pieces that are smaller rather than fewer pieces that are larger. Bigger pieces go together quicker, but IMO the smaller ones tend of be more stable when it's all glued up...

Hope this helps!

[rmason]

Ok, so maybe the wood is thicker. I measured the thickness with the face up. I need to measure with the edge up, which in this kit varies from 2-8''.

In his videos he refers to them as edge grain. Isn't the edge of the board where they staple the tag at the big box stores? If it were an edge grain board it would then be made of a dozen or so blocks, right?

No, they staple the tags to the end grain. I disagree that the edge and the end are the same thing. Boards have 3 types of surfaces, face, edge and end, they are distinct. The face and edges have different characteristics depending which part of the tree they were milled from. The end grain is always the same unless you get into burls.

[Boatworks Today]

I stand corrected I haven't really heard the term "edge grain" all that much (more familiar with the specific types of cuts and made an assumption). whoops!

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

In a wider sense, the term grain may also be applied to the orientation of the cut, the way a given piece of wood has been sawn:

• flat-grain: flat-sawn, slab-sawn, or plain sawn,
  
• edge grain: quarter-sawn or rift-sawn or straight-grained, and
  
• end grain: the grain of wood seen when it is cut across the growth rings.