Hello everyone,
I'm new to this forum and have been doing some woodworking for about a year, and am basically a newborn when it comes to making stuff. I've done a few projects, and decided to try my hand at an end grain cutting board.
My first board ended up being a fail when I ran it through my, new to me, planer, trying to use it as a joiner. I had the depth set a little too much and the thing shot off my sled and hit me in the stomach, fell on the ground and cracked in half.
OK, lesson learned. I started another board. I had it all done, 11 1/2 by 16 1/2 and an inch thick, nice and square, flat and looking good, made of maple and oak. Then I find out that oak is bad for cutting boards, much to my disappointment.
So I decided to make coasters from this board, so I cut it into 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 squares. But an inch was too thick for coasters, and I don't have a band saw, so I resawed them on my table saw using a microjig pushblock, which I love, and only sent one flying across the garage.
Since the cuts weren't super clean, I thought I could send one through the planer to to plane it down. I set the planer to take off a very small amount, and used a very thin push stick to get it going. The first coaster exploded into a million pieces in my planer, which was interesting to say the least.
I tried sanding them on a finish sander but that was kind of a pain. I put my belt sander upside down in a vice and sanded the saw marks out that way.
I wanted to customize them a little, so I decided to put the first initial of my last name in the middle of them. Current photo attached.
After I put a letter in all of them, I'm going to paint the letter, do a roundover on the top four edges, put little rubber sticky tabs on the four bottom corners for feet, and seal with a clear varnish.
Just wanted to share, will update as project gets further along.
I'm new to this forum and have been doing some woodworking for about a year, and am basically a newborn when it comes to making stuff. I've done a few projects, and decided to try my hand at an end grain cutting board.
My first board ended up being a fail when I ran it through my, new to me, planer, trying to use it as a joiner. I had the depth set a little too much and the thing shot off my sled and hit me in the stomach, fell on the ground and cracked in half.
OK, lesson learned. I started another board. I had it all done, 11 1/2 by 16 1/2 and an inch thick, nice and square, flat and looking good, made of maple and oak. Then I find out that oak is bad for cutting boards, much to my disappointment.
So I decided to make coasters from this board, so I cut it into 3 1/2 x 3 1/2 squares. But an inch was too thick for coasters, and I don't have a band saw, so I resawed them on my table saw using a microjig pushblock, which I love, and only sent one flying across the garage.
Since the cuts weren't super clean, I thought I could send one through the planer to to plane it down. I set the planer to take off a very small amount, and used a very thin push stick to get it going. The first coaster exploded into a million pieces in my planer, which was interesting to say the least.
I tried sanding them on a finish sander but that was kind of a pain. I put my belt sander upside down in a vice and sanded the saw marks out that way.
I wanted to customize them a little, so I decided to put the first initial of my last name in the middle of them. Current photo attached.
After I put a letter in all of them, I'm going to paint the letter, do a roundover on the top four edges, put little rubber sticky tabs on the four bottom corners for feet, and seal with a clear varnish.
Just wanted to share, will update as project gets further along.