First end grain cutting board

[Biff Johnson]

Just finished this for my eldest daughter. Thanks to all the good cutting board topics on this forum, it was a fairly painless experience! Now the wife has commissioned one for herself!

I pretty much covered the forest on this one: Oak, cherry, maple and walnut. Finished with 50/50 beeswax and mineral oil. Used Titebond III.

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[JoAnn Duggan]

Bill:

Great job, your daughter will love it. I love the edge you put around it to catch the crumbs or juices.

JoAnn

[David Keller NC]

Biff - Very nice job. A question and an observation:

I've made a fair number of these out of maple. What did you use to flatten the final surface? I found that the end-grain of maple will just laugh at a ROS equipped with a coarse aluminum oxide sanding disc, so I wound up having to smooth the surface with a low angle handplane and wetting the surface with lots of alcohol. Putting it through the planer seemed like a very bad idea - it would either shatter the planer blades, or shatter the piece, or both.

The observation: it looks like the end caps on your board are oak oriented 90 degrees to the maple/walnut interior. I'm thinking you may have issues with the joint between the end caps and the rest of the board failing, since the end cap won't allow the maple/walnut interior to expand/contract in width.

[Biff Johnson]

Hi David,

Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure about the oak end caps, I guess time will tell! If it causes problems at least it will be easy to remove!

Fortunately my glue up stayed flat so I just had to do a light pass with the belt sander and then finished with ROS 100 grit through 220.

I used mineral spirits to soften the spots where the router bit burned and sanded them off by hand (great tip I found on SMC!).