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!

Walking around Bruges on my recent Europe trip, I spotted this interesting tool near a construction job site. It’s a combination table saw and chop saw. Not probably the best thing in the world for building fine furniture, but I bet the owner of this tool likes carrying one tool around instead of two! Pretty cool idea, actually. I think the table saw fence doubles as a guard for the top of the blade when you’re using it as a chop saw.

Posted a bunch of our trip photos to Flickr yesterday. I have some more things to share from the trip, and I’ll be sharing those over the next few days. For now, it’s out to the shop!

I have a feeling Dave is out there somewhere traveling around in foreign countries, going to great museums and drinking good beer. Those of us back here stateside were wondering if we could get an “in the field” report of art on the other side of the ocean.
(Dave:That is if you have access to a computer that is. Hope you are having a good time!)

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As a holiday bonus this year, employees where I work received AmEx gift cards. My first thought was to use mine for my upcoming trip to France and Belgium, but then learned the cards are difficult to use for travel expenses. Luckily, Woodcraft takes them!

I had been thinking of acquiring a lathe for a long time. I think my hesitation had to do with the fact that most of my work is very geometric in nature, and I think of the lathe as a tool for decorative turnings: spindles, bowls, vases, etc. I also had no idea how much fun a lathe could be!

I ended up going with a “starter lathe,” the Jet 10×14 Mini Lathe, which seems like it will do the majority of what I want for at least a little while. The “10″ number indicates the diameter of work that can be turned on the lathe, while the “14″ indicates the length between the motor (headstock) and the tailstock. An extension is available to increase the “14″ dimension, which I may do soon-ish.

I forgot that with most tools, the minute you start playing with them, you can think of uses for them. I am going to be remodeling my attic this spring, and part of that will include spindles for the stairway railing! As you can see from what I’ve got mounted in the lathe, I’ve come up with a lot of artistic applications for a lathe as well!

The second major purchase with the gift card was the WorkSharp Sharpening Center. I’ve read about these a lot in the woodworking magazines I subscribe to, all of which have rated it highly. I think it’s easily one of the best purchases I’ve made in the last 2 years (tablesaw still wins the “lifetime achievement award”) since it does a mundane job quickly, which gets me back to work sooner.

Basically, it’s a motorized version of the “Scary Sharp” sharpening method, which I’ve used in the past for my chisels and plane irons. With the WorkSharp, a perfectly flat glass disc has adhesive sandpaper stuck to it. The glass disc is rotated by a small motor, and you simply rest the back/edge of the chisel on the rotating sandpaper to develop a mirror-like polish, working your way up through various grits of sandpaper. I took a 1″ chisel to “Scary Sharp” in about 2 minutes with the WorkSharp (granted it was fairly sharp to start), which would have taken 10 minutes the old way.

The new tools required a fair amount of shop cleanup and re-arrangement, too. I’ll take a few new pics of the whole shop once I sweep up all those lathe shavings!

I occasionally check out the Smithsonian Art Museum’s blog, “Eye Level,” and often I’m intrigued by what I see there. Last week, I was especially fascinated by a work I found in their collection after seeing this giraffe featured on the blog.

I clicked on another link, and found this snake, which upon seeing, I knew I could improve. I’ve been compulsively collecting bottlecaps for a long time, and I have every color in the rainbow. A few hours sorting the caps, some simple carving, woodburning, a quick paint job … and voila: my Sunday Afternoon Smithsonian Snake.

It’s going to be a little present for my godson Will, just because.