I’m making the Wood Whisperer’s checkerboard end grain cutting board and its turing out to be a beast. Having the pieces all glued up with end grain up (hard maple and purple heart) and removing most of the glue squeeze out, the end grain is extremely hard. Since its not perfectly alligned (about 80 end grain squares) I have to smooth it.
Herein lies the problem- the end grain is so hard, it has chipped the blade on my Lie-Neilson block plane. Resharpen, and it chips after the first 2 minutes! Eighty grit paper doesn’t make a dent, and it dulls my #80 scraper.
SO what is the best way to smooth an 12″X16″ chunk of laminated end grain thats as hard as mummy’s nuts? How do I keep the blade from chipping? The blade is “new” and sharpened with Veritas jig on water stones. I’ve spent hours on it already, not including re-sharpening!
KB
Replies
Router table is one option. You could glue spacers to the side to and just makes multiple passes to clean it up. Set your fence and make a pass at the edge and spin the cutting board 180 degrees and make another pass. Move the fence over and repeat step one until done. Use your biggest bit. As long as your table is flat it will come out smooth.
Rick and Mike
Since I dont have a CNC machine, and I'm not making a glass or plastic cutting board, your input wins the gold metal. THanks for the router ideas. I was hoping that others might have experience with a "like" project.
As for the plastic, as you use it, it develops cuts and nicks and crooks and crevases that could harbor bacteria. Food services use butcher block tops and laminated maple tops for food preperation to this day. People have been using wooden cutting boards for years. THe advantage of an end grain board (which is also part of my problem) is that the end grain is difficult to slice through and will not generally leave a knife mark.
As for the micro-organisms, a culture plate (petri-dish with growth medium) is typically used to detect the presence of bacteria. I may just do my own bacteria culture experiment- with a little help from my microbioligist friends.
Anyway, a lively discussion. Any suggestions from a woodworking point of view are welcomed. In particular, why did the cutting edge of the blade chip out? Was it the end grain or the glue?
KB
Edited 6/1/2007 8:12 pm by Keef
keef- I made the same board- I have a performax belt sander and it was a cinch for me- (not trying to rub it in- I just think that is to tool of choice for the job) If I was in your shoes I'd take it to a shop that has a drum sander- for very little dough you can have them make a few passes-save this project and it will be dead flat (for a cutting board)
As for the plane iron- I'd email Lie-Nielsen and run it by them- They'd have to be able to steer you right on bevel angle etc. Dave
A stroke sander would have it done before your morning coffee's ready.
David Ring
http://www.touchwood.co.il/?id=1&lang=e
KB,
It is easy to get a nice flat surface, even in end grain, using a good CNC machine. You may have to add on to your house to have the room, but you'll be a lot happier. With the house addition, you should be able to do it for less than $40,000.
Now I'll get serious. Years ago, I used to have a lot of fun making endgrain cutting boards out of maple. Then I read about how bad wood cutting boards are for housing and breeding germs. They are worse than the bottom of your sink. I haven't made a wood cutting board for anyone I love for about 30 years. I tell them to buy plastic and to put it in the washer every night, and FOR SURE, after cutting any raw meat.
However if you are making the cutting board for someone you don't like, I wouldn't worry about telling them about the health hazards.
Have fun.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
Hope you are getting D.C. under control.
But, back to reality -- Because of my work I know a little bit about the cutting board issue you refer to. At one point we were told to get rid of all wooden cutting boards and replace them with "plastic." Three months later we were told to get rid of all "plastic" cutting boards and get wooden cutting boards.
Turns out wood cutting boards are safer from a health / germ perspective than the various "plastic" ones.
Alan - planesaw
Check the following:
PLASTIC AND WOODEN CUTTING BOARDSDean O. Cliver, Ph.D
We began our research comparing plastic and wooden cutting boards after the U.S. Department of Agriculture told us they had no scientific evidence to support their recommendation that plastic, rather than wooden cutting boards be used in home kitchens. Then and since, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Meat and Poultry Inspection Manual (official regulations) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 1999 Food Code (recommended regulations for restaurants and retail food sales in the various states of the U.S.) permit use of cutting boards made of maple or similar close-grained hardwood. They do not specifically authorize acceptable plastic materials, nor do they specify how plastic surfaces must be maintained.
Our research was first intended to develop means of disinfecting wooden cutting surfaces at home, so that they would be almost as safe as plastics. Our safety concern was that bacteria such as Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella, which might contaminate a work surface when raw meat was being prepared, ought not remain on the surface to contaminate other foods that might be eaten without further cooking. We soon found that disease bacteria such as these were not recoverable from wooden surfaces in a short time after they were applied, unless very large numbers were used. New plastic surfaces allowed the bacteria to persist, but were easily cleaned and disinfected. However, wooden boards that had been used and had many knife cuts acted almost the same as new wood, whereas plastic surfaces that were knife-scarred were impossible to clean and disinfect manually, especially when food residues such as chicken fat were present. Scanning electron micrographs revealed highly significant damage to plastic surfaces from knife cuts.
For more info see http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/docliver/Research/cuttingboard.htm
Alan,
Wow. Great reply. I am learning new stuff all the time.I read the article you included. What it tells me is that the best way to go is to use plastic cutting boards, but to use a very dull knife, and not much pressure.There are other alternatives. One would be to make replaceable cutting surfaces,and replace the surface after each use. This is much like using new filters in a coffee maker. This will require some research and development. The article also shows how important it is to have an electron microscope. Most woodworking shops don't have one yet. Woodworkers tend to buy lathes, saws and CNC machines before getting an electron microscope. Too bad. Maybe the prices will come down. All seriousness aside - lets get back to basics and cutting boards.
What about a glass cutting board?
How about steel with a Rockwell Hardness of over 60? Knives won't scratch that!I look at my old wood cutting boards which are still under the sink, and they really got cut up, even more than the plastic ones. Now I use a glass one, and another that is made from the Corian cutout for my sink. Both the Corian and the glass look like they have held up very well. MUCH better than wood or plastic. Have fun.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Wood is best!!!! Buy fresh meat, not the grey stuff, when making burgers on top of the board, wash it immediatly while the burgers are cooking and before you start to slice the onions and tomatoes. Best for your knives, in general are healthier than plastic ( see previous post), help to propogate the woodworking trade and are a great use of small shop scraps, plus, they look darned nice when thoughtfully made. I like maple and red birch, two closegrained hardwoods.
"Both the Corian and the glass look like they have held up very well. MUCH better than wood or plastic."I thought Corian is plastic?!
Wow. You bring up a good point. I found the following:
-------------
"Corian ¯ - is a composite material. A bit cool at touch it is produced of natural stones and highly technological acrylic resin – this kind of combination has many advantages over other materials. * Composition: 2/3 of trihydrate of aluminum Al(OH)3 (white clay)
* methyl methacrylate (acrylic resin)
* edible pigmentsCorian ¯ - is an imporous material and that makes it resistant to stains and bacteria. Being solid balanced and colored through all its depth (Corian has no surface or laminate upper layer which could be scratched) it is very durable and lasting."
-----When I look at the "plastic" cutting board that I have, and the Corian cutting board that I use, the "plastic" looks much cheaper and has lots of knife lines in it. The Corian looks great and doesn't have the visible knife gouges. I am sure that if I looked at the Corian through a microscope, I would see cut marks. Thanks,
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
I think if you just wipe it down with a light bleach solution and rinse well it will kill any of the bad bugs in the microscopic cut marks. You could sand out the corian, the guy who installed a counter for us did that to hide the seams.What are we all worried about anyway? We'll all be much more affected by cooking on teflon coated pots and pans for all these years!!!! And what about eating all those eggs before we found out they were bad for us and then they were good for us and then they were bad for us (where are we at this point on eggs - good or bad??)A little bacteria from the cutting board.....HAH!
Corian quickly dulls knives as does glass and all other cutting board surfaces (that I've heard of anyway) that cannot be scratched by a knife.
Best solution I've found is to keep two cutting boards around. One for meat and other stuff you plan to cook, and another for raw fruits and vegetables. It helps if the cutting boards look significantly different from each other :-).
MikeTo the man with a hammer, all the world is a nail.
A little bacteria from the cutting board.Yup. We overreact.
I learned to under-react when I was an Assistant Scoutmaster for years. I watched and even participated in some cooking that most normal people would cringe at. But we survived.My favorite Boy Scout cooking story was: I was walking around the camp one morning, trying to get all the Scouts going, and I saw one kid cooking and asked him what he was cooking. He said "pancakes". I responded, "Aren't pancakes supposed to be wider than they are tall?"Have fun.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
WOW! And I had a conversation with my local butcher a few weeks ago about this very topic. He mentioned how they re-surface their UHMW plastic table tops every so often. I have already printed this article to share with him and will inquire as to how they maintain their cutting tables.After our conversation I was determined to never build another butcher block top. But now I am reconsidering. I will do further research.GREG
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Exo 35:30-35<!---->
Why is hard maple a stanard material for the food industry?
I've read that a clean wood cutting board rinsed with HOT water can be just as sanitary
(and sometimes more sanitary) than plastic.
I agree, just think of the butcher block for meat cutting, all end grain. They have been used for years, long before the butcher block "look" became popular.
You can set up rails for your router. Two parallel rails, one each fastened to opposite sides of your board, and another rail set on which your router will ride that you work back and forth along the fixed rails. You'll still need to do some sanding after that, but it won't be too bad.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Beltsander
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match
I've also heard of flattening with a handheld router. I think it involved a larger aux router base (baltic birch or mdf) and rails of the correct height around the piece that the base rides on. Use a large flat bottom bit, and secure the piece well to the table.
This is basically the router table idea turned upside down.
Also, I believe low angle planes are best for end grain cutting... but I wouldn't ask that amount of end grain cutting from any planer.
My local lumber shop has a drum sander which they charge $1 per minute on. I imagine your board would only take a couple minutes and most of that would be setup.
___
hope this helps
This approach would work on well figured burls too and we all know that
flat bottomed burls keep the rockin whirled down
;-)
Ken
I used the router/rail set up to straighten up an ancient butcher block table...it had the legs included in the top and had been used in a meat market.
That approch worked great but it does dull the router bit after a time. I used one of those bowl or tray cutting router bits with the curved corner...kind of like a wide U.
I just cut a dado down the center of a 4" board, then ripped to the center of this dado and screwed it to the sides of the butcher block with the bottom of the dados facing each other and at the level I wanted to cut to. 30 minutes for a 36" square table top.
ken,
Yes, but if they are treadle powered, you'd really have to get on your bike and ride!
Ray
the treadle power might make me once again...just a skinny lad.
Here's a comment from someone who uses the microplane discs:4/19/2007
(Dennis - Bath, NY)
I have been using the Microplane sanding disks and have found them to be a nice addition to the sanding operation I have already been using. I do a lot of manufacturing of Butcher Block Cutting boards, they are all end grain, and can
be a bit uneven when they are glued up. So my mainconcern was with the ability of leveling the boards out easier then with traditional sanding. With theMicroplane the initial sanding operations do go speedier with the use of the medium and fine disks,the course disk is useful but does cause some rip out of the grain. This has caused me no problem as I use the medium disk to start.
Rick, thanks for the micro disk tip- and from someone who is using it making cutting boards! Today I am taking the project to my local sawyer who has a large drum sander.
The answer to blade chipping is to steepen the bevel angle a small amount--even a couple of degrees often makes a difference. The other solution is to be patient with the hand plane and take very, very light cuts. There really isn't any reason why you can't address the board with a smoothing plane, the cutting angles aren't that different, but having real handles can help with the process. This isn't a task that can't be accomplished with hand tools.
Neither is there any reason to stick doggedly to a technique that you aren't comfortable doing or confident of success. Lots of good suggestions already in these responses.
Hi Keef,
Check out these microplane disks for your sander. I bought the 3 pack earlier today. I don't have any yet, so I can't tell you how they work on endgrain yet. My first suggest would have been the handplane option you tried. These disks are really micro planers. Sounds like it might work.
http://www.microplane.com
Disks:
http://us.microplane.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=23
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