So we have gotten several requests for end-grain cutting boards from family, friends and clients so when I was hauling a couple slabs of maple for another project, I decided to bring home a third and see what I could do. The slab I chose was pretty large and had some interesting grain figure so I was excited to see how things would look once they were broken down into individual cutting boards.
Why end-grain? There are several reasons why chefs and butchers prefer end-grain cutting boards. First, they look spectacular. Second, they don’t dull knives as quickly. And finally, the end-grain doesn’t show knife marks as easily after heavy usage. The downside is that they are a lot more time consuming to build.
The maple tree we are using was rescued from a trip to the landfill as part of a safety clearing operation at Gardner Airport. The tree was milled by Tom the Sawyer and left to air dry.
We started by breaking the large slab up into workable pieces and then processing those pieces to make flat workable boards. Truth be told, this was just all a giant rouge for me to be able to use my new 12″ jointer.
We continued to process the boards until we had a stack of building-blocks that we could use to build the cutting boards.
We were excited because the wood had some very interesting figure that we knew would show up in the final product. Once we had the individual pieces we began to glue them together. First, we glued up the face grain. Second we cut the pieces into even thickness, rotated them ninety degrees and glued them up again.
We had enough wood to produce four boards in total. When the first wave of smaller boards were done, we sanded, and sanded and sanded some more. End grain takes for ever to sand, but the results are looking good… there is still more sanding to do, but a quick splash of water to simulate the oil finish and we could tell that we were going to get everything we hoped for.
From this point construction sped up… The boards took several passes through a belt sander. Once flat, the boards where then cut on a cross-cut sled to their final dimensions. The edges of each board were then rounded over and the entire board was finish sanded. Then began the application of food-grade mineral oil… coat after coat was applied as end-grain really soaks up oil. Here are the boards 4 coats in.
We love when friends come by and volunteer to help. Two of our friends popped by to help us mix up our custom cutting-board finish. We start with food-grade mineral oil and heat it slowly adding local beeswax until it melts and goes into solution. The mixture is then cooled and sets as a oily paste that provides a great food-safe final coat to our custom cutting boards.
