white areas on the crossgrain

Sap wood. The inner core of the tree is dark and the outter part is lighter. Your board just cuts out into the sap wood.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

While the sapwood of Cherry IS white and DO I see it crossing the outside corners of the Cherry, there also appears to be white smudges in the photo that looks like glue stains to me. It even appears to smudge across a couple different wood species there if I am seeing it correctly. (Could be light in the camera lens – hard to tell exactly)

End grain is quite porous, so the glue can really go deep. You may be sanding quite a bit to get these out.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

Ok. thanks for the feedback. I thought I had selected boards with no sapwood but apparently I must have missed that little bit of sapwood on the side of one cherry board..

Yes, I am going to sand more. That other smudge is probably glue. Each time I glue up a cutting board, I have glue flying everywhere in the heat of the moment of trying to quickly glue up 24 strips. Still have to figure out the optimal way..

-- Yves

Wash it off with a clean wet rag. Wash it a couple of times.

You may have selected boards with no visible sap wood, but once you cut into them it was there. Look at the walnut cutting board below. I didn’t see the sapwood until I planed the glued up cutting board. It was visible on the other side of the board, but I had done the glue up so one side would be all dark wood, but that didn’t work out.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

Yes Mark but look at the photo. The white goes across the joint to the other wood also. This is applied and not sapwood.

Grandpa, I don’t think those are the white marks he’s talking about. He’s talking about the sapwood in the corners of the cherry pieces.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com

Mark, those are some mighty fine Walnut racing stripes in that board of yours! ;-D
Wood has a way of asserting its “natural” charms I suppose.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

You might be able to fix that sap wood with a little Gel Stain and a Q-tip. At least make it more defined against the sap wood. I’d tape the sapwood first. The other looks like a bit of glue or something. I’d try a piece of 180 by hand and see if it sands out. Go easy.

-- Failure does not stop me, it makes me try harder..... because I'm crazy.

Yves, you might try gluing up in two stages to help take off some pressure during the glue up.
Half as many strips at a time, then glue two halves together.

There is a practical limit to how much glue one can sling about at a time before joints begin to fail.
I think I am worst when it comes to glue slinging.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

Mark, there’s nothing wrong with that cutting board – the sapwood stripes add a ton of character

-- Mark Kornell, Kornell Wood Design

If that is all you are concerned with, then realize you are dealing with wood and that is what makes it wood. Some things you live with.

Iguana I didn’t mean to imply there was anything wrong with it. It actually sold for a nice price. I was just pointing out to the original poster here that the sap wood only showed up after I planed and sanded the board. He was saying basically the same thing happened to him as the sapwood wasn’t visible when he selected the boards for his cutting board.

-- Mark Smith, Tracy, CA., http://www.markscustomwoodcrafts.com