Today, I'm going to take you through step
by step and cover everything you need to know about making this beautiful, walnut cutting
board. Hey everyone, my name is Tim and welcome back
to another episode of Casual Builds. The channel focused on bringing YOU beginner
DIY and woodworking content. Now before we get started with today's build,
there are a few things you should about cutting boards. The first thing that you're going to want
to know is what type of wood to use with your cutting board. In my case, I'm going to be using this, uh,
walnut.
Some other options are maple, cherry, basically
it just needs to be a hardwood with a tight grain pattern. And also, you've got to decide what type of
cutting board are you gonna make. Are you going to make a face grain cutting
board? Is it going to be an edge grain or end grain? And I can quickly explain the differences
between all three of those. A face grain cutting board is when the face
of the board is on top. Some of the pros are that the face is typically
the most decorative part of the board so it’ll look nice. And, these can be fairly easy to make if you’re
working with lumber that’s all the same width. On the other hand, the face will definitely
show your knife marks more easily than an edge or end grain board would. Also, there’s not a lot of give so it can
dull your knives quickly An edge grain cutting board is when the edge
of the board is facing up.
This is what we’ll be making today. Some advantages of an edge grain cutting board
are that they’re sturdy and less likely to warp. Also, unlike face grain boards, you can control
the width of the overall board. Some cons are that they will still show knife
marks and they can dull your knives over time as well. Lastly, an end grain cutting board is when
you crosscut an edge grain cutting board and align it so the end of the board is facing
up. End grain boards are the best for your knife
and are less likely to show as many knife marks compared to an edge or face grain board. Some of the cons, they take a while to make
because sanding end grain takes forever and they can split or crack if not glued properly. So to start, we're going to take this piece
of walnut and we're going to chop it up at the miter saw.
I'll probably go somewhere between 15 and
16 inches or so, not entirely sure yet. But once we have those pieces, we're going
to clean up each one of the edges over with my jointer jig at the table saw, rip them
into strips, and then we'll probably send them through the planer. So let's just start off by doing that. Now that I have one edge on each one of these
boards all cleaned up, I'm going to take that edge and reference it against the fence on
my table saw and then start cutting these into strips. So the width of each one of these strips is
gonna represent the overall height of the cutting board when its completed.
I'm going for an inch and 3/4 knowing that
I'm going to take it to the planer later on and that will remove some of the thickness
as well. So let's go ahead and take some of these boards
over and start ripping them down some smaller pieces. So I was really hoping that all of these boards
would be flat enough that I could just glue them together and be done with it, but as
I am arranging them there's a lot of gaps in here and I want to take care of those now. Because if I just force it together with glue
and clamps I'm assuming that there's going to be issue down the road, it might come apart,
it might split so definitely don't want to do that. We're going to take out the jointer, run them
all through, and then run them through the planer and then they should be all set for
glue up. Alright, so the planer and the jointer worked. These boards are nice and flat. For the glue, I'm going to be using Titebond
III, it's waterproof.
I've never had any issues with this so that's
what we'll be using. And then for clamping you just want to make
sure that you're putting equal clamping pressure all the way through and just enough glue that
you can see the squeeze out coming from the top and the bottom. I'm going to put two clamps on the bottom,
two clamps on the top. You don't want to over tighten it, you just
want to make sure that it's tight just enough to get that glue squeeze out or else you might
kinda end up with a warp in your board later on. We don't want that. So, let's go ahead and glue this baby up! Well it's a little bit later in the day and
I am going to wait until tomorrow morning before I unclamp this and put it through the
planer, but I was just so excited to come down here and take a look and see what it
looks like and umm, it looks great.
So. See you tomorrow! Alright so, this thing is looking pretty sweet
off the planer. There are a few things that we need to do
next and the first one being, taking this thing over to the table saw and cleaning up
the edges – I'll use my crosscut jig for that. After that, we're going to bring it over to
the CNC and engrave it, per the client's request. And once that is done, we'll add a chamfer
along all of the sides just to clean up any of the sharp edges. Alright now we're on to sanding – I'm going
to start off with 120 grit working my way up to 220 grit. When I'm done with that I'm going to spray
this entire thing down with water to raise those little…
Grain fiber, little wood fiber
things so I can sand it down again. That way it's gonna get super smooth and you
won't be in for a nice surprise the first time you go and wash this thing. So that part is super important, spray it
down, sand again, just remember that. I almost forgot… I need a…
You know. So it's been about 45 minutes and this thing
is still pretty wet so I'm gonna let it dry over night and then tomorrow we can come back
and sand it again up to 220 grit and add the finish. Alright it's time to put some finish on this
thing. I'm going to be using mineral oil. This little bottle is made by Howard – I'll
leave a link to this as well as all the other tools that I used in this video down in the
description below if you're interested.
It says to season a new board to do at least
3 to 4 coats. You put a coat on, you wait 20 minutes, you
wipe off the excess, rinse and repeat. And I like to just finish things off by using
this other conditioner. It's got mineral oil plus some waxes, I'll
do this one last. Also, if you're making this as a gift for
someone, highly recommend telling them to pick up a bottle of this as well. Typically wood cutting boards will kinda dry
up over time and when you start to see that happening, you just put a coat of this on
and it just rejuvenates it. Also, if you found this video helpful and
you would like to support my channel all you gotta do is hit that thumbs up button, subscribe
if you're not already to stay up to date with my latest beginner woodworking videos. Now let's go ahead and put the finish on and
watch this walnut come to life!.