W O O D U M A K E I T ?
Edge Grain Cutting Board
And edge grain is very durable because of the hardness of the edge grain. However, it's a little harder on the knives.
I made this cutting board with some leftover pieces of hard maple and sipo. I started by cutting the maple to the rough length of the cutting board.
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Then I jointed one face of the maple so that it would be flat.
And then I jointed an edge so that I would have a straight edge that was 90 degrees to the face to run along my table saw fence.
Next, I planed the maple down to the desired thickness.
Then I cut the maple into strips that were about 1 1/2" wide. When turned on their edge, this would be the thickness of the cutting board.
Next, I cut the sipo to length.
I took one of the pieces of sipo and ripped it into two thinner strips.
Now it's time for glue-up. It's important to use plenty of glue because squeeze-out is not really a problem at this point.
I clamped it up and wiped up all of the excess glue to make it easier to clean up the next day.
After the glue had dried, I trimmed the ends of the cutting board.
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Then, I ran the cutting board through the planer to bring it down to the final thickness (probably about 1 1/4").
Next, I drilled holes along the edge for dowels to be inserted. I used black walnut dowels for a nice contrast.
I cut the dowels using my band saw.
Then, I put some glue in each hole and tapped the dowels into place.
After the glue had dried, I used a flush cut saw and then sanded the ends of the dowels to be flush with the edge of the cutting board.
I used a 3/8" round nose bit in the router to cut slots for fingers to make it easy to pick up the cutting board. I used stop blocks to accurately position the slots.
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Then I used a 1/4" round over bit to round over the edges.
Then a final sanding prior to finishing. I began with the random orbit sander and then finished up by hand.
After sanding, I soaked the cutting board in water, let it dry, and then I sanded it. This helps to raise the grain so that the cutting board remains smooth when it's washed. I did that a couple of times.
After the cutting board was completely dry, I applied a couple of coats of mineral oil.
