Island Cutting Board Questions...

[No Spam]

I committed to making a large island cutting board for a friend. It's about 27" x 40". Hard-rock maple was planned ~3/4" nominal thickness.

I was just going to make it fit over the existing formica top. An apron over the four sides would hide the existing top and keep it from sliding around. It would seen to be nice to remove it for easy cleaning, etc.

I'm not sure how to do the apron on the end grain. A breadboard end would leave cracks, which is not desirable. The only thing I came up with is to glue small 1/2" pieces glued face grain to face grain on the ends.

Another option is just to remove the formica top and replace it with the solid wood top.

My friend mentioned an end-grain cutting board, but that seems like a great deal of work. Extra work for the cutting, extra work for the glue-up and alot of extra work for flattening. I don't have a wide belt sander to flatten it.

If I did end-grain - is hardrock maple still the right wood?

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Chris Friesen]

It's about twice the work. You rip it and glue it like an edge-grain board, then you plane it flat/smooth. At this point you have a perfectly fine edge-grain board. Then you crosscut it, flip each piece, and glue it all up again. If you make one edge strip about half the thickness of the others, you can offset every other glue joint in one direction to minimize the likelihood of splitting.

Best bet for flattening is a low angle jack plane...sanders leave grit in the wood, which is bad for knife blades.

Sure. I made an endgrain cutting board out of cherry and hard maple, about 2" thick.

One thing to note...endgrain has very little strength when thin, so you'd want to support it somehow. It will also tend to temporarily warp if one side absorbs moisture and the other doesn't.

Chris

[dadiOH]

Way too thin for that size (unless*firmly* supported) for any serious chopping. Too big for handy cutting or chopping too unless he is doing sides of beef. YMMV. _____________

I would. ______________

Much better and not all that much work...

1. Cut strips of sufficient length
2. Glue strips together - enough to make one dimension of desired finish size
3. Crosscut strips...2" would be about right.
4. Glue crosscut pieces together to make dimension #2
5. Flatten with a hand held belt or disk sander _______________

Most any fine grained & hard wood will do.