Old School Planar at the Organ Factory
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Purple Brick End Grain Cutting Board
A gift for my mom for Christmas 2015; the year of the cutting board. I made a 101 mistakes when putting together this board, but the finished piece is one of my favorites. Purpleheart bricks with maple mortar. I particularly like the uneven, oval radius of the edge which I opted to sand on the belt sander by eye, rather than the regular radius of the router table. This piece has morphed in color over time, the purple has become a darker maroon, but I think it adds a bit to its intrigue.
Required Resources: 8 hours, $40
Size: 12" x 12" x 1.25"
Materials: Purple Heart, Maple, Titebond III (Food safe wood glue)
Finish: Howard's Butcher Block Conditioner (Canuba + Bees Wax + Mineral) Oil
Tools: Table Saw, Stationary Belt Sander, Orbital Sander, Planer
New Techniques: I had done the checker patterned end grain boards in the past, so I figured I'd give the brick and mortar pattern a shot. I had a big 8/4 piece of purple hear laying around, but had to resaw my own 0.375" thick maple "mortar" pieces. I did this on the big industrial table saw at work (it use to cut boards to make 40 foot pipes for pipe organs. It is a bit of a beast.)
Lessons Learned: The biggest issues I had with this board were with the glue up. All of the small maple mortar pieces were very fiddly when I went to put the "unit slab" together. This caused a couple of resets and a lot of frustration. The way to do this moving forward is to buy rough cut 2/4 maple stock which is at least 6" wide (which I have found plenty of at McBeath's). This eliminates the entire resawing step (which was actually kind of dangerous on a table saw). Resawing (cutting a board to a new thickness, parallel to the face grain) is typically done on band saw not a table saw which can pinch the part against the fence, chip it up and spit it right back out. On a subsequent brick an mortar patterned project, I purchased the correct thickness and width of maple board. That project went twice as fast.
