5 Cutting Board Mistakes to Avoid

Adventures in glueing scraps together!

I tried my hand at making a cutting board and I Forked Up a few times along the way,
join me as I show you how to make a random pattern cutting board and also how to not do what I did wrong.

The end result is great and it fully fullfills its purpose, being the thing that I cut veggies on so I don´t ruin my countertops and/or knife.

The second, bonus function, is that it looks damn pretty next to the two other store-bought cutting boards that suddenly feel like the uggo stepsisters from Cinderella.
On of them is called Plastic Sadness, a polyethylene mostrosity made from the catalytic cracking of crude oil into gasoline,

The other is an IKEA product, scandinavian high flying design that attacked an innocent bamboo tree to live the rest of its life as a half loved cutting board.

Needless to say I love my DIY cutting board a whole lot more.

Some scrap hardwood, in my case I had Oak, Cambara, Azobe and Abachi, but you can

use pretty much anything as long as it is not a mega soft wood, like pine.

A cutty thingy. In my case I used a table saw, you can also do this with a miter saw, then you would cut small blocks instead of long strips, to achieve the patterned same effect

Wood glue, any kind will do really: https://amzn.to/2QntqvX

A planer or handplane: https://amzn.to/3c0H8gE

I used a a combination of handplane and a router sled to achieve flatty flatness of the board

roundover router bit set: https://amzn.to/3v5udkS
1/2 inch straight router bit: https://amzn.to/3rst04Y

A few grits of sandpaper (80-120 and 180) and something to sand with, either a block of wood or an orbital sander

A tiny bit of water ( or snow) which is pretty much free when using rain, or the frozen version of rain -->snow.

A clear oil to finish your board

Take your scrap material and cut it to length first.

I chose 45 centimeter, since over the course of the glue ups you will lose a significant amount of material
due to the many cuts and the kerf of your blade ( which is 3mm in my case)

So chop saw out, plankies on there and if you have one, you can use a stop block to make repeatable cuts at
45 centimeters, or any length of your choosing.

Then you will have boards of various thickness and width, but ALL the same length,
now take them over to the table saw, if you are cutting small strips.
If you don't have one, you can stay at your chop/miter saw and cut everything into fairly even cubes, and later glue all the cubes together. See chapter "2 Glue all the Things".

First clean up the boards so they all have a straight edge, on mine I had to cut off some roundovers, jagged edges etc..

afterwards I set my table saw fence at 3 cm and ran every board through it, until there was no more board left to run through.
Congrats, you have completed step 1, hopefully with all your fingers intact. (push sticks everybody, they rule)

You are now left with strips of wood of various colours.
Now for the fun stuff: RANDOMISATION!, just move all of them around so no 2 colours are next to each other,
like a reverse gentrification action.
Then flip each board on its side and add glue to each strip, which you later smear out to give the most glue surface you can.

line all the glue seams up with one another and add 2 clamps lightly just to hold the whole system in place,

now add some plastic sheet to the bottom and the top before clamping everything down, so you don´t glue your new cutting board to your work surface.

Add a few strips of wood above and below and clamp those down as well.
This way you have clamping pressure one way to keep all the glue seams together and clamping pressure perpendicular to that to straighten your board.

Now sleep, or drink, or take a looong walk. Go tell someone you are making a cutting board and yes, you know what you're doing, because someone on the interwebs told you about it.

In my case I added a TON of clamping pressure to keep all the glue seams closed, think like the pressure at the bottom of the marianas trench, and not enough pressure to keep the boards flat. So I created a Pringle shape. Yay :)
I made the same face as the toilet roll penguin does here.... ( MISTAKE 1)

To fix that I used a router flattening jig, there are many designs online, it is a simple tool that lets you run a router with a flat bit over your workpiece to take out the highs and lows and thus create a flat board.

After creating a mountain of sawdust I had a flat board that was technically already a useable cutting board.
I did go way to deep at the start and ended up cutting about half the thickness of the board away before realising just how much material I was removing
(MISTAKE 2)

At this point you can claim victory and go publicly chop veggies on it, just to show that you ARE a real carpenter.
I took it one step further though.

On the interwebs I had seen these random pattern boards with many small blocks in them.

In order to make these you have to repeat step one and 2, follow me :)

I used a router sled with a stop block at 3 centimeters to again cut a bunch of strips from which to glue up the final design, if you don´t have a router sled, you can use the crosscut attachment on your table saw.
or even a track saw with a guide would work here.

I turned all the strips 90 degrees so the end grain is facing UP.
Now to RANDOMISE again, you flip every second board upside down and the end result looks pretty darn funky.

At this point I got half a percent smarter and did the second glue up ON my crosscut sled, which is flat and I created equal pressure around the board, so no pringle shape could arise.

When the glue up was done you are left with a board that looks a bit like other male bodily fluids were spilled on it, but that is entirely in your dirty mind.
To get rid of the glue I ran the whole thing one more time through the router sled before sanding everything flat.

MISTAKE 3 was not paying attention on the second run, I misaligned my router jig and ended up with boards that were skinnier on one side than the other, when making this flat, always check that your surface is level, otherwise you keep going until there is no workpiece left :)

I changed the flat bit in my router to a roundover one and went over all the edges so the sharpness was gone.
You could also do this with a handfile and rasp.
Then I sanded the board from 80 grit up to 180 grit.

The final step before oiling is to raise the grain. if you don´t do this then your cutting board will feel like hairy legs after you wash it the first time. A splash of water pops the grains up and if you go over it one more time with 180 grit, it becomes smooth as a babies bottom, and will stay that way.

Since I have no water in my shop, but there was snow on the ground, I used snow.
It is simple the more stackable version of water.

The more hugs you give snow, the more it melts and becomes your friend again, this water was left to dry out and I sanded the board once more.
then we moved the party over to my kitchen

I used a clear oil to finish my board and then started complaning about the next 2 mistakes.

MISTAKE 4 was using Abachi ( the yellow stuff), apparently it is a soft wood, this means that when I wash the board it has way more play than any of the darker pieces in there, which don´t move.

so after every wash my board warps a bit, which sucks, but I can always fix it by wetting the opposite side and letting it air dry.

MISTAKE 5 comes after the fact.
In my enthusiasm for the new cutting board I used it for everything, showing off to my wife and kids, cutting on it, serving cheese on it and also putting very hot pots and pans on it during dinner.

Now, Abachi and schorchio-hot things do not play well, which caused cracking and additional warping.
So after 4 days the Return of the Pringle was imminent.

luckily I stopped doing that and with some selective washing the board is flat and usable, but I would advise against putting the flames of Mordor on your cutting board, cause it could start some trust issues between you and the plank.

anyways, happy building and be better than me!

Thanks for reading!

YVES.