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This is a butcher block I built for one of my sister's. the top is 7 in. thick out of hard maple with walnut accent blocks in the middle to match her kitchen floor. The legs are out of cherry with a natural finish. There are close to 1200 small blocks to make up the top. It took two of us to move it in the kitchen. I am not sure if I want to try this again.

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I see it was lot of work and a lot of wood , very well done.

Thanks for sharing with us and welcome to Lumberjocks community.
 

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Very nice, any idea how much it weighs?
 

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it's beautiful… i would hate to make the first cuts on it
 

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I am not sure how much it weighs Snowdog, but my guess would be around 150 to 180 lbs.
 

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Sweet.

How wide is it? Looks like 34×34 blocks. If they are 3/4×3/4 inch thick, at 7 inches tall that is 32 board feet of lumber in the top alone. Yikes! Am I close?

Steve
 

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Hi Steve, I am not real sure the size but you are very close. When I started this project I was sure hating to cut up all of that nice hard maple into those small pieces. I wish I had made a series of pictures as I was in the process of making it. The place I get most of my wood has some very nice tiger maple that I am in the process of making a baby cradle for my nephew's first child. I can't wait to get a finish on it to see how it comes out.
Thanks for your comment
 

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Stanley it came out great. We forget when we build things from wood just how heavy they can be.
 

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That's an incredible table. How'd you do the glue-up on that?
 

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Yeah, and how did you surface plane that beast?
 

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Bradford: "Yeah, and how did you surface plane that beast?"

That's what I was wondering. Nice job!
 

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I am with bradford. How did you plane this? It is awesome.
 

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same question… how was it done? And, it is a really well done match to the floor design. Like, so much so that if she ever had to sell the house… the block may have to stay with it… ?

She really wouldn't use it for a cutting surface, would she?
 

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According to my const. calculator 34"X 34" X 7" equal 32.8 bd. ft. the weight should be around 150 lbs. and that the top alone… where the beef?....Blkcherry, Oh and by the way that's a beautiful piece of work!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

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wow stan this looks great
 

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wow!... now that's one real lucky sister. Great job…... mind talking about how you went about the glue up?

Erik
 

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Thanks guys for all the comments. This was one of the most labor intensive project that I have ever tackled. My sister came to me and gave me a picture of what she was wanting. She said that she wanted it to go inside the square in the middle her kitchen. I had never thought about a butcher block table before so I went on the internet to do some research and most of the information said to use hard maple and have the end grain as the top surface. I wanted to walnut blocks in to accent the square in the floor tile and the best way I could think of was to make all the blocks the same size. So, after cutting all the blocks and man did I have a stack of them, I made me a jig out of MDF to lay one row of blocks in to glue up. I would glue as many seperate rows as I could at one time until my clamps ran out. After getting all of the rows glued up and sanded, then I would start gluing the rows together, about 6 or 8 rows at one time. Then at last I would glue up those sections together. To get the surface flat and smooth I used my hand held best sander first and then went to my orbital sander. I put several, several coats of food grade mineral oil and then a couple coats of a bees wax mixture. She does use the butcher block to prepare food on, every couple of weeks she puts a couple coats of mineral oil and top coat it with bees wax.
 

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I hope she appreciates what she has, that is gorgeous and would cost a small fortune if she could find on.

very nice job! that will be around for at least 3 or 4 generations

Thanks for sharing

dayton
 

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this is indeed a beautiful piece. I cant even imagine how labor intensive this was. but well worth it. looks massive.

thanks for posting this. this is inspirational.
 

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This is fantastic, nice job Stanley! I love all the different shades that the maple takes on and gives the piece a really nice effect. It looks like you captured the colors of all of the tiles really well too, great work!
 

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How much glue did you go through? I would guess it would be measured in gallons! GREAT job! I doubt you will ever see anything like this anywhere.
 
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