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cutting slices for an end grain cutting board

2K views 10 replies 10 participants last post by  bobasaurus 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
i never seen to be able to cut nice even slices to turn on edge for an end grain cutting board. have tried several routes, but none seem to work for me. any ideas????? any help would be greatly appreciated. i hate to give up on them as you can do so many different designs.
 
#4 ·
I've had fairly good luck with just the tablesaw (DW744 with a Ridge Carbide blade) on most of my similar work but I can tell the blade is a little bit off.
A method I saw the other day on Instructables was a guy getting close on the tablesaw and then trimming down 2 edges with a planer. I haven't tried it that way but if the boards are straight, I'd imagine it'd work.
Link
 
#8 · (Edited by Moderator)
Can't even remember why I had a marathon session years ago cutting off thin slices of endgrain, but I just went over and used my dad's finely-tuned radial armsaw with a little stop and a buffer board on the out-cut (you just scoot it along with the stock you're cutting).

Radial arm saws seem to have gone completely out of style, but they're great tools as long as you don't try to make them do everything.

Oh, I should add: the thing with cutting small pieces off against a fence is, what happens to the little piece after the cut? Small stock is inherently dangerous with big power tools. But with a radial arm saw, you have a wee stop tucked down into the corner where the fence meets the table, enough to make a firm register but not to get caught against. Then you push the blade back behind the fence after each cut and use the end of the stock to push the cut off piece over to the right out of the way. Your right hand stays on the handle the whole time, your left hand is always well out of the way of the blade and doesn't leave the long end of the stock (always use longer than you need).

And another thing. You can cut precious stock all the way down to the last sliver in complete safety if you make a housing for it out of pine (I've done this with shipwreck wood, pink ivory, stuff like that).

You take a piece of pine the thickness of your small precious wood but wider and much longer, say 20 inches. Then cut 10 inches off that and glue it to the longer piece such that you've got a kind of L bracket. Then on top of that you glue a kind of roof of say 1/2" pine, such that under the front part of the roof there's pine on one end then a space the size of the small stock you're working on the other end. Then you put a highly visible mark on top of the housing where the aperture ends and tack the stock into its housing with just a couple of thin stripes of children's glue. Then you cut your slices off this whole thing and take any remaining rinds of pine off.

So your hand stays away from the blade with the added benefit of buffering against blowout and fuzzy edges.

In addition, don't try to write a long forum post before you finish drinking your coffee, otherwise you'll wind up editing it half a dozen times.
 
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