Butcher Block tops?

[Laurie Brown]

I want to build a new center island for my kitchen to go along with the new cabinets and refacing I'm doing, and I'd like to put a butcher block top on it. Can anyone who's made one before tell me how I can go about doing this? What kind of wood should I use? How do you build the top? etc. Thanks in advance!

[Kent Fitzgerald]

Maple is the traditional wood. You definitely want to use something with closed grain, so it wont absorb food particles or liquids. Mineral oil (drugstore grade) makes a good non-toxic finish.

Building it isn't complicated, just labor-intensive. Joint, plane, and rip a lot of lumber into 2x2" or so strips. Commercial butcher block uses short strips that are end-jointed, but I wouldn't bother with that. Glue up with a lot of clamps and water resistant glue.

You probably won't get perfect alignment of the glue-up, so it makes sense to build the top in several sections that will fit through your planer to bring them to final thickness, then carefully join the sections.

[Jim Becker]

Laurie, I used hard maple with walnut accents for my kitchen island when I built it. I had to do the glue-up in 3 sections so I could utilize the planer to even things out and then clamped and glued the three together, being especially careful to get the "top" surface across all three "flat". Any minor deviations sanded out easily.

Here's a picture of the top right after it was completed in 2002:

http://sawsndust.com/images/kitchen-island/k-island-prefin-topoiled.jpg

To date, it's only been treated with mineral oil VERY infrequently, but since we do not cut on it (!), I think I'm going to spray a film finish on it in the spring to make cleaning easier and stop staining from "leaky" fruits and vegatables... ;)

[Bill White]

I would just buy a top. They are not that expensive, and they are SURE a lot quicker. None of the "I made it myself" stuff, but the price is right.
Bill

[Lars Thomas]

I am currently making a small kitchen. We are re-using the existing countertops. But in places where there currently isn't a counter top, they are doing butcher block. They found it pretty cheap at Ikea. Grizzly also carriers butcher block. A price/quality comparison would be interesting.