Having waited a suitable amount of time with the eight sticks in clamps, it is now time to remove the clamps and continue making the cutting board. Be sure that you have had the sticks clamped for at least three hours. More is better. If your shop is cold, you should be aware that aliphatic resin glue requires that everything be 40 degrees farenheit or warmer. If you’re gluing in the cold, you need to significantly lengthen drying time. I’ll say a little more about this when I provide pictures of the gluing step in Stage V.
This board is cured enough for machining:
So I removed the clamps:
For now, we need to flatten the board we’ve made. Earlier in the series I mentioned that life is much easier if you make the board small enough in one dimension to send it through your planer. An alternative is to make two pieces that can be planed, glue them together, and then simply flatten the single resulting joint with a hand plane, belt sander, or whatever. You can also opt to flatten the entire surface with a hand plane or belt sander if you want to build a board larger than the width of your thickness planer–or if you don’t have a thickness planer.
Rough goes in, smooth comes out:
After planing the board as shown above, here is what you have:
Once you have a flat board, ensure that the miter gauge on your tablesaw is 90-degrees to the blade as shown below.
Then square one end of the board.
When I did this, I was left with a piece of stock 34 and three-quarters inches long. The next step is to determine how thick I want the finished cutting board to be. Decide on the thickness you’d like and then apply the same formula for calculating how many cuts you can make in this much wood as we used back in Stage II of the project when ripping the two 35-inch planks.
I took a shortcut here. I wanted the board to be about an inch and a half thick, so I figured out how many times 1.5 inches goes into 34.75 inches. The answer was 23.1666. Knowing that, I tried three scenarios (20,22, and 21) while subtracting the appropriate number of saw kerfs. In the end I found that I could get 21 strips 1.5 inches wide with no trouble, so I selected that number. This would make a board longer than I wanted anyway, so I knew I’d have waste. I don’t mind that because it keeps me from succumbing to the temptation to cut the small end pieces when it no longer feels comfortable to do so. My policy is that it is better to waste wood than to remove body parts. In the end I got 19 strips and did not use them all. I also did not cut the entire length of the stock. Below is what I left at the end of my comfort zone:
To make the strips I first needed to set the fence for the 1.5 inch cuts. Since I would be crosscutting I couldn’t safely use the fence itself as a guide. Instead, I placed a guide block next to the fence and measured 1.5 inches from the guide block to the blade and then locked the fence at that location.
Note that the saw is unplugged any time I am working near the blade.
I used an old handscrew to fasten the guide block to the fence, positioning it far enough in front of the blade that the stock would clear the guide block before contacting the blade. This prevents accidents that can occur should the stock bind on the guide block (or fence if no guideblock were used–BAD IDEA) and then contact the blade at an angle, bind, and kick back. In addition, I used a sacrificial fence on the miter gauge.
Below are some shots of the setup:
I then proceeded to make the cuts. At first, I held the stock in place against the miter gauge by hand since there was plenty of room between me and the blade.
These pictures show the final moments of the first cut.
You may be wondering about the fact that the saw blade is always at rest in these pictures. In fact, I do stop the blade between most cuts so that I can safely remove the cutoff and scrap. I know that many others don’t do that, but I still have all ten fingers, and use them every day in my work. I just feel safer this way.
So I continued cutting strips from the stock:
When the stock got a little shorter, I began using a push block to hold it in place against the miter gauge.
In the end I had 19 strips, which made a block that was too long for my liking. I only used 14 in the final cutting board. That’s a lot of waste, I know. Chalk it up to this being my first board in a long time. I didn’t properly plan this when I cut the original plank into 35-inch sections. Next time, we’ll try to be more accurate.
We’ll get to that in the next stage of the project. For now, don’t forget to support me by visiting the advertisers in the sidebars and/or using my vendor links when you shop. I’ll appreciate it greatly.
