STEP 1: CUT BOARDS TO SIZE
I made my cutting board about 1 ½″ thick, so the first thing I did was rip all of my boards down to 1 ½″ wide strips on my table saw. I used a 1x6x8 walnut board, so I was able to rip this into 3 strips 1 ½″ wide.
Then, I had three random pieces of walnut in my scrap pile that I also ripped to the same width to mix in.If you don’t have a table saw, you could simply purchase your boards in 1x2s instead of ripping them down.
If you didn’t know, nominal size 1x2s are actually ¾″ x 1 ½″.
NOTE: I used 1xs here turned on their side to make my board. If you wanted to use 2x2s instead, that’s totally fine.
Once all my boards were ripped into 1 ½″ wide strips, I trimmed them to approximately 19″ long pieces on my miter saw. Some pieces I left a little long–they’ll be trimmed down in step 3.
I cut down enough boards so that when laid out together side by side (standing on their edges), they made a board approximately 12 ¾″ x 19″. (This was basically 17 strips of 1×2). Fourteen of these strips were maple and 3 were walnut.
STEP 2: GLUE UP CUTTING BOARD
If I’m gluing up more than a few boards at a time, I like to do it in sections. So I laid out my boards how I wanted, then split them (about) in half. I glued up these two sections separately. To glue them, I applied wood glue liberally to the faces of each board, then clamped them with pipe clamps making sure to adjust them as flat as possible.
This will be messy–be prepared haha.Once I glued half of the pieces, I repeated for the other half.
After both sections had dried (a few hours), I glued them together the same way making sure to keep them as flat as possible.
STEP 3: TRIM CUTTING BOARD TO SIZE
After the glue had fully dried on the cutting board (overnight), I trimmed the edges square on my miter saw so that the board was about 18″ long overall. I didn’t trim the width, but you can if you wanted to.
STEP 4: FLATTEN AND SAND CUTTING BOARD
If you have a planer, you can run this through the planer to flatten the top and bottom of the board to prep it for final sanding.However, if you don’t have a planer or don’t want to run this through it, a belt sander and a little patience works just fine, too.
I used my belt sander with some 80 grit paper to sand down the bottom side of my cutting board first. I used a level to help me identify high and low spots and sanded down the high spots until it was flat.
Once one side was flat, I flipped it over and repeated for the other side.Then I followed up sanding the entire board with the orbital sander through 120, 180, and 220 grit until all sides were smooth and ready for finish.
STEP 5: ADD EDGE AND FINISH
After it’s sanded, It’s ready for finish. But, if you wanted to add a little extra detail, you can add an edge with a router and your favorite edging profile. I know a lot of people like round over edges on cutting boards, but I’m not a big fan of them.So I used a chamfer bit to just kind of remove the sharp edges, then hand sanded over them lightly.
And finally, it was ready for a coating of cutting board oil. There are tons of options out there for cutting board oils.Just make sure whatever you use is food safe if you plan to actually cut on it.And with that, this cutting board is ready to use or ready to give away.
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