I made this Wood Whisperer inspired, end grain cutting board for my wife’s birthday. This marks my first indoor (non-shop) project, my first “real wood” project, and my first non-paint finish.

I chose maple, purpleheart, and walnut for the woods. I bought the wood pre-surfaced because I don’t have the “big boy toys” yet. That includes a table saw, so my size/layout options were a bit limited as well. I started by clamping the three boards together, and then cutting all three at once with a miter saw. In hindsight, gluing the boards together first would have saved me a lot of grief, because after twenty cuts I found myself with sixty little blocks of wood to glue together instead of twenty.

After way too many separate glue-ups, made only more complicated by an absence of long clamps, I finally had a nice, big slab. This board was originally going to be the tired-old rectangle shape that’s been done to death, but a gap between some of the pieces (not to mention the somewhat imposing weight) convinced me to cut the top corners out and make a handle instead. It worked out as well as can be expected, though I had some serious trouble making those curves. A rough cut with my jigsaw worked out well enough, and I decided to clean it up with my new router table.

This is when I discovered just how much softer walnut is than purpleheart and maple. Every time the router blade moved from one of the harder woods to the walnut, it wanted to yank the board in and eat it for breakfast. This made it difficult to make a nice, neat, consistent cut. That was very frustrating, and left the final shape a whole lot less smooth than originally intended. Plus it’s not very symmetrical. Still, as it turns out both my wife and I actually like the “chunky feel” better, so that turned out alright.

Then came the flattening process, which had me crying “uncle!” Between a poorly sharpened card scraper, a random orbital sander, a hand sanding block, and many hours of effort I managed to get it reasonably flat. Next time I will pay a whole lot more attention when gluing pieces together; end grain is a whole lot tougher to sand down than I expected, and this board could definitely use a little more work in that department.

For the finish I used Howard butcher block conditioner. It is basically mineral oil with beeswax and carnauba wax. After heating the bottle in a pot of water to melt/soften the wax, I applied as much as the board could absorb, wiped it off a few minutes later as directed, and then applied additional coats every day for the next few days. You can see in one of the pictures how much of the original 12 ounce bottle is left (a little over half).

This stuff sure changed the appearance of the wood! I included samples of the original woods in some of the pictures so you can see the before and after. The purpleheart looks great when the light shines on it just right, but the walnut darkened up too much for my taste. I’m not very happy with the weak contrast between these two woods. Next time I might try salad bowl finish, but more than likely I won’t use these two woods together again without something in place to better accentuate the differences.

Edit: One thing I neglected to mention is that during the glue-up process I found myself with three long rows of blocks, none of which had clean enough edges to glue together side-to-side. I remedied that situation by jointing them on my router table using a two-inch top and bottom pattern bit. The bearings weren’t used; it was just the only bit I had that was long enough to cut through the entire thing in one pass.

I have determined that South Dakota winters are not conducive to woodworking in an unheated garage. Figured that one out all on my own, I did. Now that it’s finally warming up, hopefully I can start getting some projects done! First up: a router table.

I had serious doubts about my ability to ensure a flat surface and nice, straight fence, so I went ahead and bought a premade kit from Rockler. My original intention was to build one of those really cool looking Norm Abram specials to mount everything to. Then my limited floor space situation slapped me upside the head and told me to simply build a basic frame and attach the top. The thought was that I could keep it hung on a wall most of the time, then pull it out and clamp it to an existing table when i need to use it. That is still my plan, but due to sheer size and weight it turned out to be nowhere near as portable as I had hoped. It will likely be replaced somewhere down the road, but it will work for a while as long as I can physically manage it.

The entire frame is simply held together with screws. Some of the screws supporting the most weight may need to be replaced with bolts before it can be safely hung from a single stretcher. The table is attached to the base by so-called tabletop fasteners. The ones I used came from Rockler, but it looks like you can get them significantly cheaper (and in higher quantities) from other places like McFeely's. Cutting the grooves for the fasteners to slip into was something of adventure (see the burn marks?) the way I did it, but it should be a whole lot easier next time now that I have a router table to use. I have heard a biscuit cutter works well too, so I might try that when mine gets here.

For power, I used a Rockler safety power tool switch with a large “stop” paddle that so many others seem to use. Looks like it’s actually on sale at the moment. :-) I still need to decide how to attach the cords to keep them generally out of the way, but this switch seems to work great. It feels a whole lot more heavy-duty than expected. I did have to scrounge up a couple of screws to mount it with because the ones it came with aren’t intended for wood.

Speaking of screws, the tabletop or one of its accessories came with a bag of nine screws (see attached picture). Nothing seems to be missing from my assembly, so I can’t figure out what these are for. Any ideas? Are they for a stand I didn’t purchase? Nine is an unusual number.

I recently bought an Oneida Dust Deputy to go along with my…somewhat lacking dust collection system (AKA a Shop Vac). I learned very quickly that this two-stage setup is extremely clunky, and has an annoying tendency to tip over if it gets a chance. This cart addresses both limitations. It still takes up a lot of space, but at least it’s easy to move now. I intentionally made it a little bigger than necessary so that I can simply lay my extra hose attachments on the bottom next to the vac/buckets.

Construction is pretty simple. It’s almost exclusively 1/4” plywood, glued at all the joints. This stuff was about as warped as a potato chip, so it will be interesting to see how long the sides can hold it flat. The blocks in the corners each consist of three plywood squares glued together, and are only there because I used stem casters that I inadvertently ordered and didn’t bother to send back.

The vac is screwed down with 3” long, #10 sheet metal screws using the factory screw holes intended for the casters. Lining up those holes was the hardest part of the project. I didn’t want to ruin a brand new 5 gallon bucket, so I simply used double-sided tape and a plywood spacer. I don’t think that tape is intended for plywood, though. It seems to be holding right now, but I won’t be the least bit surprised to see it rip free at some point. I can always screw it down later if need be.

This project was a first for me in more ways than I can think of. Virtually every aspect of the project was something I have never done before. Needless to say, with no mentor other than the internet, it was definitely a challenge!

The bulk of the cabinet is 3/4” plywood. The base is glued into dadoes cut in the back and sides, which are connected by rabbets. The full-extension slides are offset from the inner walls by double-thick layers of 1/2” plywood. The hinges are a hidden European style, and unfortunately they didn’t leave enough clearance for the shelves to slide out once the doors were on, so I had to make some hasty “design changes” on the fly. Hopefully the hinges hold up over time, as the doors are fairly sizeable pieces of MDF…

One of the doors is a little crooked because it turned out that one of the cabinet side panels was bowed out, but only on the top front corner. Not a fun thing to work around. It didn’t help that I put one of the hinges a little closer to the edge of the door than the other, either. I ended up trimming one edge intentionally crooked and fiddling with the hinge adjustment a little. It’s good enough for what it’s for, but it certainly wouldn’t pass for decent interior cabinetry! Oh, and one of the door handles is WAY off. That’s what I get for ignoring the voice inside that was screaming at me, “Stop! It’s going to be crooked!” And rushing. Rushing is bad. Unless you’re a running back. Then it’s expected.

The work surface is a double layer of 3/4” MDF. I still intend to trim the edges down a little, but I haven’t yet settled on exactly how much overhang to leave. Right now there is an extra four inches on three sides, and eight on the left in case I decide to buy a vice. The face frame, which I had originally intended to paint, is birch. I found out the hard way that 18 gauge brad nails secured into plywood edges will not hold a face frame without help if there are doors attached to said frame!!! Another small “design change”. :-) Let’s not get into the other “design change”, which proved to me that glue joints are, in fact, stronger than the wood itself. Okay, plywood in this case, but you get the picture. It wasn’t pretty, but at least I didn’t have to scrap everything and start over.

The entire cabinet rolls around on non-locking casters. If I need more stability I will jam some rubber doorstops under the edges. If that doesn’t work I will prop it up on 2×4’s. If that doesn’t work I will bury it in sand. Down the road I hope to implement several enhancements inspired by Cory, but that’s a project for another day.

All in all this was a fantastic learning experience. I think I paid through the nose for some things, especially the sheet goods ($55 for a sheet of MDF; $45 for 3/4 inch “shop” plywood, whatever that means), but the hardware (swivel casters, rails, hinges, and handles) only came out to around $50. All told it end up being around $200. I suspect it could be done a lot cheaper with different wood suppliers.