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End grain cutting board fail

8K views 7 replies 8 participants last post by  TTOKC 
#1 ·
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.
 

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#3 ·
I glue a scrap piece of wood on each end of my endgrain cutting boards and run them through the planer. View following youtube video . This youtube video is how to do a square in a square end grain cutting board. Close to end it shows how he glued up scrap piece to run the planer.

I don't use anything other than mineral oil to finish my cutting boards. This is food safe. I gave my son an endgrain board two years ago and they didn't take care of it very good as it was all cut up and looked terrible. I took it home and ran it through my drum sander a few times and took all of the cuts out of it. I used mineral oil and it looks as good as it did when I gave it to him two years ago.
 
#4 ·
Well, if nothing else I bet it's entertaining watching you work in the shop!! LOL! Welcome to the forum and we've all been there, I can guarantee that. The lessons learned on those will carry you a long way and you got those mistakes out of the way early. I like the way you've salvaged the board, though - nice job!
 
#5 ·
You've had an exciting project! For future plans, white oak is fine for cutting boards. It's red oak that's porous and to be avoided.

Consider a router sled to smooth the top of your end grain cutting boards. I have used the planer (on maple end grain!) but did as owlelope mentioned and glued a piece of scrap across the end. Then I fed it through taking tiny amounts off at a time. The scrap tore off the end anyway but only chipped the edge a little.

Then I gave it to my son's GF for a Christmas present. He broke up with her shortly thereafter and she kept the cutting board.
 
#6 ·
When I first started making cutting boards, I sent one thru my planer, it bucked back and nealy broke my right hand, since then I only use my drum sander to finish them after final glue up. That is untill Monday of this week, I had two small cheese cutting boards, both were too short to send into the planer, so I built a sled to capture both of them, and they made it thru the planer ok. Hind sight is 20/20, next time I make smaller cheese cutting boards, I'll plane them before I cut them to size. They were not end grain boards, but edge grain. I took very shallow cuts till I got the boards where I wanted them. I don't believe I will do that with end grain boards tho. They are destined to be finish sanded in the drum sander.
 
#7 ·
FYI your planer will have a minimum length for stock you can run through it. I'm not sure what kind of planer you have, but 3 1/2 inches is definitely too short to run through a planer. I would recommend you read the owners manual and find/follow the mfr's recommendations on this.
 
#8 ·
You should watch The basics of making end grain cutting boards. Part 1&2. Here is the link to part 1.


He makes beautiful cutting boards and his vids convinced me to try my own. I read a lot of the horror stories about endgrain boards and planers but used his tips and did it with no trouble.


TT
 
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