Descending Ashtray

End-grain cutting boards are a step up from the simpler long-grain versions, because the end grain provides a milder cutting surface for the knife. They are also a bit more work to make, but not too hard, as you can see from the photos below.

I keep a special pile of scrap that’s about the right size for cutting boards, and selected some mystery wood, fir, birch, walnut, cherry and bubinga for this piece. Bubinga isn’t something I normally have around, but since this cutting board is a wedding present, I bought some at Woodcrafters to give the board some added color. Here are all the cutting board pieces laid out for gluing. They are all of different thicknesses, but I will glue them up and then plane them down to uniform thickness later.

You can really never have too many clamps!

Once the glue had cured overnight, I de-clamped the cutting board and ran it through the planer until the board was perfectly flat on both sides. It looks pretty good at this point (in fact, Sarah wanted me to stop here), but I wasn’t done yet. I set up the table saw with a stop block to crosscut the board into pieces of equal width. This width is the basic thickness of the finished cutting board, as we’ll be rotating the pieces 90 degrees in the next step.

Once the board was diced up, it was time for re-assembly. The first step was to flip the pieces the long way (the north-south axis) to alternate the grain patterns of the pieces, creating a sort of checkerboard effect in the finished piece.

Next was the second and final glue up, making sure that I rotated the pieces 90 degrees along their east-west axis to have the end grain face-up. Glue went on the long grain side of the wood.

Once the second glue up was complete, again waiting overnight, I prepared for a long winter’s sanding. I used a belt sander for about an hour to level both sides of the board, cleaning up glue squeeze-out and the inevitable irregularities caused in gluing up a project like this. A planer won’t work on end grain (it will beat the knives to kingdom come and tear out big chunks around the edges), although a hand plane might have done the trick had I thought of it. Once the board was level, a little bit of food-safe oil really brought out the deep color of the woods. It’s a pretty substantial board that I’m sure will last a long time.

I also want to go on record as having completed this wedding present before the wedding, which is a first for me!