Cutting and Orientating Timber | The Chopping Board #1

so let's be real here it's inevitable at some point a woodworking channel is going to make a chopping board but in most cases it's either a 10 grain chopping board or you're relying heavily on machines such as table saws band saws and play the thicknesses for example but what if you don't have access to all of that equipment what if the only equipment you have is a jack playing for example and a bit of wood how do you turn this wood into something that you can chop your cabbages on I'm going to show you that now let's go [Music] so first of all happy New Year to you all I hope everyone's recovering well for your festivities my new year's resolution is at some point to get a haircut probably going to be 2019 though and so a little side note before I get started this project is going to be running alongside the bass guitar project that I'm also doing the link is up here for the first video on that so then that way I can satisfy my urges of doing something stupid ly complex and also satisfy the tutorial side of things so you guys can still benefit from my videos so get in close let's have a look at what we've got here okay so what we've got here is a big old slab of beech to start with which is perfect for chopping boards it's got a really tight grain on it so it doesn't get too mushy you don't get too much gunk stuck in there it's quite dense quite hard and it's also pretty forgiving to work with hand tools so really nice for this project fans here we have got a bit of oak and the nice thing about this oak is that the growth rings along here are perpendicular to the top face which means it is perfectly quarter sawn which means that we get some really nice from italeri rays along the top here which is a sort of sought after effect with oak it'll be a lot more apparent once we plane it and shove a finish on it so the way this chopping board is going together is we are going to sandwich this oak between two halves of this beach so we're going to cut this in half spin it round and put it on this side and the reason for this is because beech varies in color quite a lot sometimes it's quite pink sometimes it's quite yellow like this bit and sometimes it's like this brownie kind of hearing aid color so the reason I'm doing it over this length cutting it in half is to get rid of any color variation that might happen but cutting off like that it means that I'm going to get a perfect color match between the two halves of this chopping board and it's going to look nice and pretty at the end now before doing anything with this timber we need to kind of analyze what we've got here so looking at this Beach I can see that along this edge here there's like some small splits along it now that can either be from incorrect drying at the sawmill or it could be say where the tree was in a really strong storm or something like that split the timber inside and it's just stayed there since the tree was chopped down and also on the end here there is sort of a split as well which you can see on the end grain now looking at the oak on this side we've got a knot which is a dead knot by the looks of it so when I plane over this surface there's a big risk of that not just falling out it's not actually part of the timber anymore it's a little bit dry and a little bit crumbly so it's not a massive issue of this because that's our glue face that's going to be up against the beach like this so it will be hidden the only problem I may have is when flattening this surface because it's so close to that I might end up exposing it on the top here so I've got a little be a little bit careful of that but we've got about one or two mil to play with should be fine if I expose it then it's gonna be the bottom the other thing about this oak is that there's about centimeter of SAP wood along the edge here not a massive problem for me I don't care that much about it but what I'll do is plane this top surface have a look at it again see if I still like it if not I'll just sighs I saw that off by hand or it's only a centimeter or so so I could probably attack it with a scrub plane if needs be so in terms of tools you need for this project a plane is an essential I did a video on what planes do you need for the link is up here for that so if you're a bit confused about the different sizes different types and things like that that would be a really helpful video this one is a Jack flame or a low angle Jack plane and it's going to work perfectly over something this length the other plane that'll be handy for this project but not massively essential is a block plane because once we stick it all together this is quite nice for trimming end grain as opposed to a big plane that's sometimes a little bit cumbersome for something like that so block plane is quite nice to have a saw you do need a saw obviously to cut this bit of beach in half and to cut the splits at the end here preferably this would be a crosscut saw but you could also use a rip saw again if you're a little bit confused about what saws there are out there there's a link up here for what sauce do you need now obviously we're gonna we want inter plane this timber nice and flat so a straight edge is something quite nice to have but you don't need it I'll show you later on how you can eradicate the need for one of these and finally something that's really important to this project is a pair of winding sticks and I'll show you how we use these later to make sure the timber is nice and flat these ones here are made from metal but you can also make them from contrasting wood so you could get a bit of plastic the only thing you need with 186 is that they are perfectly parallel along their length and they are perfectly straight I choose metal because obviously it doesn't move over time whereas if I was to use wood winding sticks they might start bending and they might start expanding interacting over time and I can't be asked to stay on top of that I just get something metal and I can always guarantee it's going to be a reliable point of reference so I'll show you later how to use those what we're going to do now is cut the splits off this Beach and cut it in half right so first we're going to cut this split end off so I'm going to get a square here and I'm just gonna square a line across the top using my Jesus pen now those of you who have ordered Jesus pens and they're still waiting for them up day they got lost in the post coming from America which is incredibly annoying so I've ordered more of them now they're on their way I will send them out as soon as possible for those who don't know these Jesus pens have become a bit of a thing in my videos now and I am selling them for 3 pound 50 I'm the only UK supplier of Jesus pens so if you would like a premium Jesus pen please visit my website and you'll get follow them there so back to the project and squared line across the top I'm just going to square a line down the edges as well the more accurate we get this now with the saw it's less to clean up with a block plane afterwards so now it's going to track along that my shooting board this shooting board it's going to be replaced sooner or later hence why I use it is a bench hook I've just shimmed up the opposite side here to make sure it sits level on there what going to do is get my crosscut saw I'm gonna angle it up like this and I'm gonna start nibbling away at the back of that line and then as I progress through the cut I can start lowering the saw down and take out the entire line that means that instead of getting my saw lined up with the whole line and try and cut through like that and focus on getting the entire cut correct I can focus on a little bit of the line at a time and now I'm approaching the end and I have got the entire line established across the top and now I can focus on cutting vertically kill right we're through so we've removed the really bad split from the end of this component but it still looks like there's a tiny one here and that's the split that continues all the way up to the edge I could cut it all the way off up to here but there's also some smaller splits further along as well so if I'm too fussy about it and I keep trying to remove those cracks by the end of it this chopping board will only be able to cut like a grape or something at the end of it so that crack relatively small I'm going to live with it I think right and with that end cut off we are now going to cut this bit of beach in hearts of the moment it's at eight hundred and sixty millimeters okay it's a 430 and that's going to be the overall size of our chopping board yeah yeah beer on it look line there and again square square it along the top and down the edges a bit of support underneath looks like it needs it this side this time and this time I'm going to go directly on the line rather than to one side of it because obviously that's an equal distance between the two there is no keep side there is no waste side of this line cool sorry get down out the way bit of oak in the middle beech either side and there we go you can get our rough idea of how big this chopping boards going to be need to reduce the thickness a bit obviously the only thing we need to do now is cut down the oak to match the width or the length of these bits of beech firstly what I'm going to do here is just work out which end of this oak is the most square so that one's looking a bit ropey yet we'll cut off that end so this will be the end that we reference the ruler from so what do we say it was 430 wasn't it say square it around the top so away the back down perfectly square length if you want to know more about how to sword a video on that as well so the links in the top corner for that the tips about starting the saw up like this and leveling it out is only one of the many tips in that video so if you're struggling with soaring be sure to watch that right so timber is all cut to length and now we can work out what orientation we want these bullets to go in so well see we're having an oak sandwich here but we've got options as to which way these bits of beech go and which way this bit of oak goes obviously so with this what I'm going to do is look at the grain on the beach and I can do that by looking at the sawn surface here and try and read the grain through it or I can look at the end grain here and make a judgment as to what these phases are doing just by seeing what these growth lines are doing here so these ports here are mostly rifts on which means that the growth rings are going diagonally along there and that gives you straight lines on all four phases whereas if the growth lines were going right across the length of timber you'd get really straight lines along the edge here but then on the top you get like a crown figuring thing going on looking at these ends I can see that it's mostly diagonal here and then it's starting to straighten out here so it's a pretty straight line here and then here we're starting to get some like crown figuring but not a lot and what I'm going to do because this bit of oak here is perfectly quarter sawn along the edges here means that we've got really straight lines along here crown figuring going along here so you can see the growth lines are a little bit with I'm going to orientate the beach boards so that the straight parts of the grain are going to be put it up against the oak so we're gonna have like wider growth rings here tapering into narrower growth rings narrow growth rings across the oak narrow onto the beach and then tapering wider again so this one is still fine the other thing we can look at here is the arc on the growth rings so you can see on the end grain here that this is kind of like arcing down skipping down like this and this one is arcing up which is exactly what we want if they are both orientated like this so that both the arcs are bent downwards it means that if those growth rates try and straighten themselves out the board is going to start bowing overtime these ports it won't be too bad because they're rifts or mostly so the chances that happening are very minimal but if you've got a crown cut board where the arc in those growth rings is very prominent that's where you want to make sure that you're reversing it so our couple here arc down on there and then if there's any movement it kind of cancels itself out so just to reiterate it growth rings are down on this one and growth rings are up on this one perfectly straight in the middle so that doesn't matter white grain on the edges thin grain in the middle that's the orientation we're going to go for I reckon now let's mark them up so this is going to be component 1 put a little squiggle on there and this is going to be component 3 obviously and this is going to be component 2 so now we know what order they go in and what we need to do now if mark the face sides and face edges in fact I've already changed my mind I want this side to be up on the oak because the medullary Ray's look a little bit prettier and if I flatten this side first means I'm less likely to bust through and expose that not there so get rid of that we don't want two one here that is going to be up now face sides and face edges I'm gonna do a little swish on here and a little swish down the edges here kind of like a fish shape and on component three again on the face and the edge like that and on the oak here because I might be removing that SAP wood afterwards I'll make the opposite side the face side and then once I've got these two sides square I can just plane that down parallel and potentially remove that SAP wood later on and there we go guys that is it for part 1 so chuck any questions below and I'll do my best to answer them in the next episode we're gonna get all of these components square using nothing wrong but a plane I'll see you then [Music]

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 53,924

Keywords: woodwork, woodworking, hand made project, woodworking by hand, woodwork hand tool project, make a chopping board, making a chopping board, how to make a chopping board by hand, hand made, cutting wood, beech, beginner woodwork, beginner woodworking projects, beginner hand tool projects, start woodworking, budget woodworking, cheap woodwork project, easy woodwork project, how to make a chopping board with hand tools, how to use a hand plane, how to flatten wood

Id: WbmCemrZqPI

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2018