I have another cutting board to make. I would have liked to make it out of maple, but I do not have any maple milled. But I do still have a lot of walnut. This time I want to make an end grain board. Here are the steps I took to make it.
First, I cut 1 1/2 inch strips, 26 inches long. I then jointed and planed them all to the same thickness and width so that I had square strips.
Walnut Strips
I have been making my own cutting board finish, which I like to call Cutting Board Butter, made from bee’s wax and mineral oil. This is very easy to make. You can order melting bee’s wax pellets online. Simply add them to a tin at a 50/50 ratio by weight and heat the tin. A hot plate works well for this.
Homemade Butcher Block Oil
Once heated, stir well until well mixed, and allow to cool. It makes a very nice paste wax.
I am making an end grain cutting board, and for the edge treatment, I decided to go with chamfers. Now while the router left a nice edge, it did need sanding. I could have just used a sanding block and hoped I kept it perfectly on the chamfer face, but seeing as this face is only about 1/4″ wide, chances were good that the edges would get knocked down or rounded.
I decided to make a sanding block for sanding the chamfer, with a flat registration face and a sanding block face set off by 45 degrees. I mulled this over for a couple of days, and the resulting jig can be seen below.
Chamfer Sanding Block
So this isn’t really a corner. Well, kind of. It’s the corner of a walnut strip in a cutting board I was making.
After gluing up the board, and cleaning off the squeeze out, I noticed one of the strips had a broken corner. I could opt to just cut this end off, or fill it, but since this will be an end grain cutting board, filling it wouldn’t look good, I thought. And just cutting that much of the end off would shorten the board by an inch and a half. I opted to repair it.
Board Cleaned Up
Celtic Knot Pen Blanks
I have a couple of pens to make. I wanted to make them similar but contrasting, and have always wanted to try making Celtic knot blanks. This was the perfect opportunity.
Walnut Cutting Board
I made this cutting board about 2 1/2 years ago. Well, I FINISHED it 2 1/2 years ago. I started it a year before that. It sat unfinished for a whole year.
Long story short don’t give up. Wherever you are at it’s progress from where you started even if it’s 12 steps back. The delay actually turned out pretty cool because had I done this 7 years ago he would have outgrown it. Now he should be able to wear this for as many years as he wants to. This started 7 years ago with a promise to my youngest son that I would make him Havel’s armor from Dark Soul’s. Fast forward to today, still no armor.
When you take the bottle stoppers your husband turned. Take everything out of a storage box in his office and head to the office with a can of spray foam even the best of marriages is put to the test.
What is a “Makers Space” and why would you want to join? Continue reading
Years ago, shortly after I began pen turning, I discovered that you can have your turned pens laser engraved. I would send them off and they would be returned with my requested text engraved on them. They were always spectacular, and I wondered what it would take to be able to do this myself.
Curly Satinwood
With the price of lasers as the currently are, this now became a possibility. It was one of the primary things I wanted one for.
