How to Make a Cutting Board with Minimal Tools

if you're new to woodworking you've probably been asked to make a cutting board or three or twelve but you may have concerns that you don't have the right tools in your shop to get that job done well in this video i'm going to show you how i made these simple cutting boards with only a few tools and along the way i'm going to give you lots of great tips and advice to get you started [Music] all right so i'm gonna be using hardwoods for these cutting boards and i've got some walnut maple and some cherry that are all leftovers from other projects and they're all about two feet long i would definitely stick with hardwoods for these kinds of projects and stay away from stuff like pine fur or cedar those are all way too soft and they'll make your food taste like a uh yeah then one of the challenges that you might face as a new woodworker is what to do if you don't yet have a joiner or a planer now these tools are critical to have in your shop because they do give you the ability to mill your own roughs on lumber but you don't have to let that stop you because most hardwood lumber dealers offer the chance to buy pre-surfaced lumber now what that means is they've already done the planing for you and in a lot of cases they've ripped a straight line edge along one side of the board so you can take that right to your table saw and start cutting it right away so i started out by trimming off the rough edge of each board this way i have two parallel edges for reference and i know that each board is the same width all the way down the length of the board that's important for the next step in the process i want to cut some different size strips off of each board so that i can mix and match them to create some different color combos now i find it safer to cut these strips on the opposite side of the blade from the fence and i like to use this little trick for getting the same width strips repeatedly i just set one strip against the blade to use as a reference and then i adjust the fence until my board matches it easy peasy and i just repeat that same process until i get a few strips from each board oh and i probably don't need to say this out loud but you don't have to have a fancy big table saw in order to make your first cutting boards i was doing this same thing with a portable table saw seven or eight years ago just fine and you can too the main key is to make sure that your saw can hold a perfect 90 degree angle since you may not have access to a jointer now normally cutting boards are made from lots of narrow strips all glued together but also normally i'd have my planer or my drum sander to flatten those but in this case i'm recommending that you use the widest boards you can find for this project at least nine or ten inches wide i don't usually do that but since i won't be using my planer my glue ups need to be super flat and the fewer glue joints that i have in this the better chance there is of getting a flat glue up next i cut off about the top inch or so of each board and this is going to allow me to sandwich those other strips in between all right with all my strips cut now it's time to design these boards since i'm using three different hardwoods i want some of each kind to be in every board this walnut board will get two maples and a cherry the maple board will get two cherries in a walnut and the cherry board will get two maples and a walnut these three colors go so well together and i think each of these boards looks pretty great but most importantly each board is only going to have four glue joints speaking of glue ups let's go ahead and take care of that now i have a few tips for glue ups here that i'm going to give you the first is to use a water resistant glue when making cutting boards there are a few different brands i recommend tight bond 3 that's the one that i've been using for years and it's always worked great for me also we want enough glue but not too much because we really want visibility to those glue joints to make sure they are nice and even so i'd use a glue bottle here that can give a nice fine bead of glue i personally love using condiment bottles just for this reason now you could use a brush or roller to spread this glue but i'm just going to use the spreader that i already have on the end of my hand once i get all my pieces glued up i began adding the clamps slowly i'm really trying to be as careful as i can here because things are going to want to slide around and go up and down and all over the place and i don't want that because i'm using minimal tools here i really want to take care to make sure that i glue this up slowly and keep an eye on those strips to make sure that everything stays flat another tip you really don't want to crank down on the work piece here we're dealing with three small strips and they're all pretty flexible as is so they really shouldn't need a lot of force to close up those glue joints if you're getting a nice line of squeeze out all along each joint then you have enough clamping pressure cranking down too hard on the clamps is not only going to starve the joints of glue and possibly lead to a failure down the road but it can also introduce tensions in the wood which could cause warping and you don't want that one way to check your joints is to clean off the excess glue now and i find that a little water helps with this now you can see clearly if all your joints are tight and in line with one another you also don't have a ton of glue to sand off later once it's dried now you don't have to do this on the other side of the board because we're really only doing this to check our glue joints but i have another trick to show you that you can use once the glue sits around for about 30 minutes if you grab yourself a paint scraper or something similar just run it along those glue joints and the glue is going to come off pretty cleanly this is not nearly as messy as trying to clean it up while it's still wet okay final glue up tip one way you can help make sure that your boards are all flat is to use clamping calls i like to just use strips of plywood with packing tape on one side to prevent the glue from sticking just add a call to each end of the board and clamp them down before you clamp the board together now give those boards at least eight hours in the clamps typically i like to let them dry overnight the next day i pulled them out of the clams and scraped off any remaining glue with the scraper next i trimmed these boards to final width using my crosscut sled i started by trimming the ends and then i cut each board to 10 inches in length another tip here is to always reference the same side of the board against the fence for every cut this will make sure that each cut is square to that side of the board if you haven't made a crosscut sled for your table saw yet you can also use your miter gauge to do this and also i do have plans available to make this sled that i'm using here so if you're wanting to give this a try i'll leave the links in the description to the build video as well as the step-by-step plans all right so you're ready to sand i recommend that you have a couple of cheap items on hand that just make the process go better the first one is some gorilla grip shelf liner this is like a rubber liners thing that you put in your cabinet shelves so your glasses don't clink but in our cases this is going to be good and grippy it's going to keep our relatively small cutting boards from sliding around as we're sanding them and then the other thing i recommend is a good pencil and i'll show you why in just a second all right now you can see here how grippy this shelf liner is my first tip for sanding is to grab a pencil and mark up your boards when you've sanded all the pencil marks off this is a good indicator that you can stop sanding and move on to the next grit and for these boards i'm going to start sanding at 180 and then go to 120 180 and 220 grit now if i were using my planer or my drum center to flatten these boards i could start this process at 120 grit but since i'm not doing that i'm going to start at 80 grit to make sure that i clean up all that excess glue and to make sure that all my glue joints are flush to one another how much sanding you do here depends entirely on how well your glue up went if your glue ups were flat then you don't have to worry about sanding away any high spots where a strip of wood went astray and i'm just going to mark up my boards again between each grit now once i have everything sanded to final grit i need to take care of these edges and for that i'm going to use a chamfer bit in my trim router now you could do chamfers or roundovers here but come on roundovers that's like having brass fixtures in your house you you could also do this job with a hand plane if you don't have a router it wouldn't take that much longer and really there's less chance of tear out in the grain that routers can sometimes give you the next thing i need to do here is to prep the boards for finish and i start by popping the grain with water this causes all the little wood fibers i cut while sanding to stand up like the hairs on my arm when i get cold when that happens it causes the board to feel rough and fuzzy and i also get the first chance to see that grain color come to life i just spritz them with water from a spray bottle lightly and it really doesn't take that much water here once they dry fully i knock that grain back down with my 220 grit sandpaper and the board is instantly smooth again doing this step now prevents the board from getting that fuzzy feeling later the first time you clean your board with water in the kitchen that's a pretty nice benefit okay the grand finale here is to apply the finish i like using a paste made from mineral oil and beeswax i make my own and i have a video that will show you how to make it and i'll leave that link in the description for you it's really easy to make i think it's a fun process and it makes your shop smell amazing i rub a liberal amount of the paste on each board coating it on all sides now you may have seen some other videos where people bathe their boards in a tub of mineral oil please don't do that that's totally overkill long gray boards just don't soak up that much oil like ingrained butcher blocks do but that's another video for another time just trust me what i'm doing here is all you need to do if you're gonna give this board to your sweet granny for her birthday she's not gonna be cursing you two weeks later because your board is still leeching oil onto her counters now come on you wouldn't do that to your granny would you just let the pace sit on the boards for several hours and the wood fibers will take in all the oil they need and leave the wax behind to harden on the surface then you can just buff them clean with a cotton rag until they're buttery smooth alright guys that's it you've made your first cutting board these little cutting boards are awesome gifts they're easy to make and they're great to have around the kitchen when you just need to cut up something real quick now if you guys like this video i would really appreciate a thumbs up below and also if you have any other questions please leave those below in the comments i would love to answer those for you also make sure that you hit that icon to subscribe to my channel and please hit the bell icon so that you're notified the next time i release a new video speaking of videos i've got a couple other ones lined up here that i think you guys would really enjoy so go ahead and check those out and until next time have fun in the shop

Channel: MWA Woodworks

Views: 234,280

Rating: 4.966486 out of 5

Keywords: mwa woodworks, cutting boards for beginners, cutting boards for new woodworkers, cutting boards with minimal tools, cutting boards with few tools, cutting boards that are easy, easy cutting boards, diy cutting board design, simple woodworking projects, woodworking projects for beginners, how to make a cutting board, how to make an easy cutting board, cutting board basics, cutting board tutorial, woodworking cutting board, how to make a cutting board from wood

Id: oHShhxNyAQY

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Cakeinator_]

Nice!