Ep11 - Serving / Cutting Board
Dale make a new home for his beloved Bonzais. This decorative stand can be scaled up or down depending our needs. Its not a complex build, but does involve many accurate cuts on bot the table saw, but also the bandsaw.
- Sawstop Table Saw SST-JSS15-PRO
- Carbatec Thicknesser CT-BX330P
- Carbatec Jointer JN-BX200P
- Kreg Router Table KR-PRS2100
- Triton Router TRI-TRA001B
- CMT Chamfer Bit 857-504-11 (or per your desired chamfer angle)
- Wolfcraft Clamps WLF-PRO-100450
- Carbatec Dust Extractor DC-500H
Other consumables that were used were:
- Quality hardwood offcuts!. This project is a great way to use some old offcuts you’ve thrown aside. Size is not overly critical other than to suggest a minimum of 12mm thick (or you’ll be laminating all day!) and 40mm wide as a good chunky thickness for a breadboard. The length needs to suit your desired finished sizing – or work with what you have! Dales’ species included Narra, Silky Oak, Blackwood and Tasmanian Oak, but any hardwood will work.
- You’ll need a bottle of glue for this project and you can’t go past the ease-of-use, strength and non-toxic nature of Titebond! In this project, we recommend Titebond 3 as it is more waterproof after cure, which works well for the constant cleaning breadboards will endure over their life.
- Sandpaper in various grits from #180 through to #400, or more
- An oil or oil and wax finish is perfect for this project. Just ensure you use a product that is specifically food safe, due to the nature of the project. We suggest Ubeaut Food Safe Oil, Organoil Ecowood Oil or Whittles Hard Wax Oil to enhance grain and protect the timber and provides a great, long lasting, non-toxic finish.
The Process
- Your offcuts need to be dressed all round. The final dimensions of each piece can vary, as this will just add some visual interest to the resulting laminated board. However, you don’t want the width of each piece to vary too greatly or you will have a lot of extra work on the thicknesser to do! You can use a table saw to trim a little reduce excess as the pieces may dictate.
- Now dress a face on each piece using the jointer, until you have a clean straight face. Then turn this dressed face against the fence set at 90 degrees to square one edge. Continue your passes over the jointer until again, you have a continuous clean face, square to the other. Once all pieces have been dressed in this fashion, you can move on to your thicknesser.
- With the wider flat/dressed face down, thickness your boards until they have a matching dressed wide face, so the thickness is consistent on each individual piece. You need not worry about the final 4th edge yet. As mentioned, each individual piece may be anything from 12mm to 500 mm wide – it is up to you!
- The next step is laminating these boards altogether. There will be a lot of glue used here, so consider laying down a couple of pieces of waxed cooking paper on your workbench. This will protect your bench from spills, but also keep the breadboard from becoming a permanent feature of your bench! Stand each piece upright with the narrow but dressed flat edge down. Play with the layout of your pieces until you are happy with the colour/grain/thickness visually. Then apply glue evenly to each face, rubbing each piece together as you go and trying to ensure they are pressed flat against the table. Now clamp the boards together, using at least two clamps, but preferably more, again keeping the boards pressed flat against your bench. Dry for 24 hours.
- Once dry, the whole stack can be unclamped, removed from the bench and fed through the thicknesser to bring to an even height, with a clean dressed face. Turn the board over and repeat on the other side if anything has move during clamping and to clean that face too.
- Now, using your table saw and a mitre gauge, trim the ends of the board so you have one square edged rectangle, or per your design. You should now have dressed faces on every side. If required, the board can be taken back to the jointer or thicknesser to tidy any faces up.
- At this point adding a chamfer to the board will provide both a visual feature, but also a practical finger lift to make it easier to lift and carry. This is done on the router table, with an appropriate chamfer bit of your choice. On Dales’ bread board, only two ends were chamfered rather than all of the board. Because of this, there was risk the router bit would break out chips on the trailing edge. To avoid this, tape or clamp a scrap piece of timber on the corner that represents where the bit will emerge after routing. This piece will prevent break out on the project itself, while the scrap will take the final hit from the bit.
- You should have a pretty good idea of what your final piece will look like now! But the magic is delivered through bringing out the various colours and grain patterns through applying a finish. Sand your board using medium to fine grits. You are unlikely to need to start sanding any coarser than #180, but you can should you have any deeper scratches. Otherwise then move on to #240, #320 and #400 consecutively. That should be plenty fine enough to apply your chosen finish.
- Apply your finish liberally for the first coat, using a brush or rag as it suits you or the selected product. Allow to fully cure before use! For best results, in 24 hours, sand again lightly using #400 paper and apply a second coat of finish. This will provide good protection for your board and enough that only periodic application of something like a liquid beeswax will keep it in top condition!
- And that’s it! A new piece for the kitchen you can be proud of, using up old scraps from former projects. Load it up and enjoy!
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