# Gluing boards for cutting boards - Is drum sander @ 120 enough?



## keith204 (Nov 5, 2013)

After the drum sander at 120, are the boards ready for glue-up? Or do I need to remove sanding scratches?

I've made a bunch of boards in the past, but have always used the planer. In this case, I didn't want to have snipe issues, so I used the drum sander at 120grit to get past some imperfections.

I definitely see sanding grooves. My hope is that this will only help the boards to smash/lock together, helping the glue up. This is hard maple.

Any thoughts?


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## Unknowncraftsman (Jun 23, 2013)

It does look a bit rough to me. Hard maple can be difficult to glue up without getting large glue lines so I think your on the right track. 
Maybe once your paper get worn it will be better or you might have to go lower in the grit.
Sometimes the best way to learn for sure is just do it and get your undeniable truth.
Something I do with hard maple endgrain boards is after rolling glue on both side I wipe it with a notched piece of wood to remove some glue.
It doesn't take much with wood that have small pores.
Good luck That's all I got.


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## trsnider (Nov 23, 2012)

I run my boards thru the planer before gluing and then glue without sanding. Sanding tends to round over corners, get the board out of square … if you aren't careful. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't sand.


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## keith204 (Nov 5, 2013)

> I run my boards thru the planer before gluing and then glue without sanding. Sanding tends to round over corners, get the board out of square … if you aren t careful. Maybe I m wrong but I don t sand.
> 
> - trsnider


This sanding is done on the drum sander which doesn't round the corners.


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## Bill_Steele (Aug 29, 2013)

I can't think of any reason why you should not do the glue-up at this point. I don't believe that the sanding scratches will interfere in any way with the glue-up-they might even help a little.

If the sanded area is NOT a glue face-then you will likely want to do further sanding to remove the scratches before the finish is applied.


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## splintergroup (Jan 20, 2015)

You are good to go at 120.

I usually take a very light skim pass (1/8 or less turn of the crank ~1/128") to make sure there are no dips in the gluing surface. You'd be surprised at the variances that show up after a "heavy" pass on a drum sander as some woods will compress slightly under pressure then snap back. Note that these are very small dips, but bug the heck out of me when they show up as a lighter glue line area on an otherwise tightly jointed cutting board.


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## RichT (Oct 14, 2016)

The easiest way to know is to test it. Take a 3/4×3/4 inch piece sanded like that on opposite faces, cut it into three pieces and glue them up. To test, set it on your bench and whack the "Y" part with a mallet. If the joint fails with wood attached to it, you're good. If the glue line itself fails, that's a problem.


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