How to Make Epoxy Cutting Boards, (Out of Scraps!)

hi I'm Michael and this is makers workshop today we're gonna make him know ways cutting board using all of the cut offs and generating as little scrap as possible let's get started normally oak wouldn't be my first pick for a cutting board but my parents recently finished an addition on their house and offered me a bunch of extra oak flooring so I gladly took it first I needed to prep the boards to the glue up I cut the long pieces of flooring into smaller sections that would be easier to work with fluorine has grooves and tongues on either side of each plank so I passed each piece through the bandsaw to remove those the back of the floor boards also have grooves meant to help with circulation these grooves also needed to go so I also cut that off on the bandsaw these steps resulted in long narrow strips of solid oak [Music] I then set them aside while I prepped my exotic wood accent pieces this is Paducah and Purple Heart I cut these sheets down in distress with the same width as my flooring once I had all my strips prepped I brought them over to the drum sander to sand them flat the flatter these are the better leading into the glue up I also took extra care with the oak flooring to make sure I sanded off the finish from the factory once I had all of the wood strips prepped I laid the pieces out and arranged them in a pattern I like before setting up to glue them together I use parallel bar clamps to keep things square when I do a large glue up like this I also always use type on three wood grooves for cutting boards because it is waterproof and holds up better to the inevitable washing that the boards are going to get all the time I put a liberal amount of wood cool on each side and press the pieces together it is also worth noting that for the no weighs concept I'm lining up my pieces so one side is flush and all of the uneven edges hang over the other side this will be important later in the project once I'm finished applying the glue I tighten the clamps down as well as I can [Music] after letting the glue dry overnight I used a large carpenter square the marker right angle and trim my edges into a nice square cutting point so this is ready for the final sanding and then to start being finished it's starting to come together it's looking pretty good and then as far as the cut-offs go here it's easy to just take these look at them as scrap throw them in the burn pile but we're gonna take these and we're gonna make another companion board out of these as well I think we're gonna maybe lay them out like this and then fill them with resin I marked where I needed to trim the longer of the two off cuts so the two pieces would be the same length I then got to making a chipboard mold to fit my pieces I covered all of my chipboard in short tape as resin does not adhere to sugar I really like using chipboard to make molds because it's flexible which makes for an easy and molten later on but you can use pretty much anything to put a mold together as long as you cover it in some sort of barrier that you know will not adhere to the recipe i sealed all of my edges using hot glue around the outside perimeter of the chipboard mold I also use hot glue to adhere the wood to the mold itself [Music] so I'm gonna start by mixing up some epoxy and now we're gonna start pouring we're gonna do multiple pours here and go about a quarter inch thick with each pour I am using total boat to the 1 epoxy here with just a couple of drops of alcoholic for a faint blue coloring because I want the resin to maintain a transparent quality for my finished piece a helpful tip to minimize bubbles in a pour like this is to pour your resin in a thin thin stream from relatively high up this will squeeze any tiny bubbles out of the liquid as it's being poured so it fills up your mold looking as clear as possible I hit the surface of my resin with a torch to get rid of any stray bubbles that formed on the surface and then let my resin hit gel phase before adding another thin layer [Music] I added layer after layer of resin until my mode was completely filled I let this sit overnight and then I unmolded it like I said earlier chipboard makes her really easy unmolding all I needed to do this was an exacto knife and then I was able to easily pull the chipboard away with my hands and the block looked awesome I'm going to trim off the faces to kind of square it up a little bit and then I'm going to slice it once down the middle so that I end up with two of them and then depending how those come out I might cut one of them in half so we have one larger and two smaller not sure if I explained that clearly but you'll see what I mean as we get going [Music] my blade drifted a little bit while I was trimming this so I flipped it around and started from the other side as well so that it would meet in the middle to give me a nice even edge it's important to mention that resin is heavier than your typical sawdust so it doesn't always get picked up by your dust collection system and it's always a good idea to wear respirator when working with recipe I then measured the width of the board and found the halfway point and then I rethought it right down the middle so I'd have two boards that were the same thickness as each other and then trimmed one of the long sides on each of the boards and then used that edge as a reference edge to trim the other long side [Music] after that I used my carpenter square to mark in 90-degree edge and I carefully trimmed that on the bandsaw as well I then did in fact decide to cut one of the boards down into two smaller boards [Music] after trimming up the board's I brought them over to the drum sander and I ran them through on a rough 80 thread to flatten the tops and the bottoms of all of the boards [Music] I then switched the belt to a 220 grit and ran them through on Bakkerud as well to remove some of the scratch marks from the santa and then to remove the last of scratch marks I used the random orbital sander I then brought them over to the router table and rounded all the edges of the small resin boards and then it was time to revisit the big board I hit it real quick with the random orbital sander and then also rounded the edges on the router table after rounding the edges on the router table I sanded the board using a random orbital sander to a 150 grit sandpaper I then sprayed it down with water to make the loose fibers stand up before doing a final sand at 220 grit the water technique is a very crucial step to get a nice smooth board I then clean the board with paint thinner to remove any dust before applying a nice liberal coating of mineral oil I let that soak in overnight and then I did a final coating of Howard butcher's block condition [Music] [Music] once again I used a nice liberal coating and let that set up for about 24 hours before wiping off the excess and doing a final buffs with a lint-free cloth I measured in about an inch from each one of the edges and I drilled a small pilot hole to apply these rubber cutting board feet with a stainless steel screw I then repeated these same finishing steps on all of the resin boards with the only difference being that I brought the resin areas up to a 400 grit to give me a slightly higher polish it's always really exciting to see the resin pop when you apply the oil in the final step [Music] overall I think this project came out fantastic I'm really happy with the colors of the boards the resin sanded to a 400 grit is reminiscent of seaglass to me and this was a great project to really maximize the amount of time that you're putting into doing it glue up because you get to use every aspect of it we ended up with four cutting boards where we would have ended up with only one it is important to note that resin boards should never be cut on they are fine for using us like cheese platters or display but you shouldn't use them as natural cutting board they're more of a cheese board if you found this video helpful please click subscribe and until next time I'm Michael and this is makers workshop you

Channel: Makers Workshop

Views: 216,953

Keywords: How to make a cutting board, making a cutting board, making a resin cutting board, resin cutting board, making an oak cutting board, makers workshop, cutting board, no waste cutting board, no waste woodworking, no scrap cutting board, no scrap woodworking, woodworking, cutting boards with no waste, resin and wood cutting boards, cutting board making, epoxy cutting board, making an epoxy cutting board, epoxy cutting board making, epoxy Resin Cutting Board, epoxy resin

Id: bGkLd4xrUB4

Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 03 2019