An end grain cutting board

This is my 4th cutting board, and I knocked it out in 5 days, 7 if you count the 2 days I let the wood rest. This was a quick project by my standards, but it’s possible to finish even faster. The most time consuming part of making an end grain cutting board is the final flattening. Since it’s end grain, you Cannot (I can’t stress this enough) run it through a typical planer. Thus it pays dividends to make sure the final glue up is as perfect as possible.

In my opinion, there are two ways to safely flatten the board.  The first is with a drum sander,  and the second is with a router sled. The drum sander yields a finished board right off the machine, but it can’t take off much material per pass. Additionally it’s not a tool found in most home shops, but if you have one it’s the best option. A router sled can remove more material per pass, but it yields a finish that requires additional refinement with abrasives. It also make a huge mess, unless you have some extreme dust collection in your shop.

Links of interest:

1. Marc Spagnuolo’s podcast about making an end grain cutting board.
2. Marc’s podcast about finishing an end grain board.
3. CBdesigner is a free (love that word) program I use to design boards.

Examples from the video (CBdesigner files):

• Example 1
• Example 2
• Example 3
• Example 4
• Example 5

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