Infinite Diamond Cutting Board | DIY Tutorial

hey this is mark with eigen designs and welcome back to my channel today we're going to be making a really cool design for a cutting board made out of cherry walnut and maple the design is something i came up with while doodling on an ipad on an airplane ride and i thought to myself this would make a really cool cutting board so i reversed engineered it into a cutting board and i'm going to show you how i made it in today's video so stay tuned and let's go [Music] to make this cutting board i'm going to be starting off with some 48 inch long boards from a local supplier that i have here in texas but you can start out with shorter stock if that's all you have i'm jumping ahead here to show you what it is that we're trying to make with the cherry walnut and the maple i'm also going to show you the design details in case you're looking to replicate this yourself the top and the bottom plate are going to be a half inch thick and the two middle pieces are going to be three quarters of an inch thick and there's a ton of variability you can do for different species if you want to mix up the colors for your board now in the interest of time i'm going to skip the milling process but i did want to show my new hammer a341 which is a new addition to my shop that adds 16 inches of both jointing and planing capacity another nice feature is that the planer has a digital gauge which allows you to dial in the thickness of any material up to a hundredth of an inch which has been a real game changer for accuracy and consistency within my shop okay let's take a look at the milled boards i've got half inch cherry on the left three quarter inch walnut and maple in the middle and then half inch walnut on the right i'll be using these boards for the glue up in the next step for this cutting board i'll be using tight bond 3 for all my glue ups and while i am clamping all these boards together i'm not applying glue to the cherry wood because the goal is to end up with different laminated boards which we will then cut diamond patterns out of to create the final pattern for the cutting board [Music] after letting the glue dry overnight i then took the laminated boards out of the clamps and set them up on my workbench two of the boards were stuck together so i had to get a rubber mallet and give them a little love tap to get them apart i then ran each of the boards through the planer taking a few light passes to remove the excess glue residue left over by the glue up you may recall from the design that the boards were actually designed to be a quarter of an inch wider than they were tall and that's to allow for the additional planing and material in this step at this stage in the build the boards are still 48 inches long but they don't need to be that long so we're going to cut them in half to double the number of boards that we have and cut them into 24 inch segments i then use my cross cut sled to put a fresh edge on one side of the board and then reference it against my table saw fence which is set at 24 inches i make sure to back off the board about a quarter of an inch away from the table saw fence so that as i make the cross cut that board is not sandwiched between the blade and the fence at the same time once all the boards are cut in half i then mark out a diamond pattern in the middle of each board i use a square and take advantage of the symmetry of the lamination using that seam between the walnut and the maple as the midpoint to connect all my lines [Music] i mark the areas for material that's going to be removed in the next step [Music] at this stage in the build i've got eight different laminated pieces that are ready for the next step in the process for this next set of cuts we need to angle the table saw blade to 45 degrees and to help me do that accurately i'm using this digital inclinometer which is something i started using about six months ago they're not very expensive and it can really help you dial in the table saw blade to just the right degree whenever you're making precision angled cuts like this [Music] once i line up the saw blade with my pencil marks i lock my fence in place and begin ripping the cuts [Music] [Music] i've repeated the same cut for the other boards and i actually took one board through the entire milling process just to get a sneak peek of what it was going to look like so this is the final product that we're working towards to create the cutting board pattern i also decided to save these off cuts because i've got another project in mind for these pieces next it's time to cut the second edge notice that the boards still have two long sides in contact with the table saw one on the actual cast iron table itself and then one long edge on the table saw fence i'm going to come back to that in a second because that's going to impact how we cut the other two sides now we've got two cuts made and we're halfway to what we're trying to achieve but the next two cuts are going to be a little trickier we've removed some of the material that we could use as a reference edge for using the table saw so i'm not going to personally use the table saw because i don't think it's safe you could use some sort of a sled with a band saw but in my case i'm going to be using my planer and referencing the new edges that we just cut to remove the material on the opposite side of the new referenced edge that'll leave us with a perfect diamond whenever we're all said and done but the downside is that you do lose quite a bit of material so it's a little bit wasteful but my approach in the shop is i would rather lose a little bit of material then make a cut that i was not comfortable with so once all that planar work is done what you're left with is this long square shape slash diamond shaped pattern and it's got some perfect 45 degree diagonal slants that's going to create that pattern that we're looking for [Music] once all the boards are arranged in the right orientation it's then time to do the second glue up in this process [Music] once the glue has a chance to dry i take a few light passes through the jump sander just to get rid of any glue residue and apparently some of the painters tape that got pulled up from the parallel clamps then we go back to the crosscut sled to begin ripping the strips that will eventually create the end green board i'll be using the stop block on my crosscut sled to make repeatable cuts and we'll be cutting them to an inch and three quarter thick the width that you choose here is what's going to set the height of the cutting board after the next glue up so select something that suits the style that you're looking to make [Music] [Music] once all the strips are cut i then take them over to my workbench and turn them on edge to where the in green is pointing up towards the ceiling i then alternate the direction of every other board to create the pattern that you see right now [Music] now it's time for the last glue up of this cutting board build and for this one alignment's going to be really important and that's something i always tend to struggle with because as you put the different boards together and you get a little bit of glue squeeze out between the two different boards that you're trying to align it can sometimes hide whenever things are not perfectly aligned with one another but do a better job than me take your time and make sure that you've got the diamonds points coming together as close together and perfectly as you can once the glue has a chance to set it's now time to flatten the cutting board and for this i'll be using my drum sander i've done this in the past with a cnc and that works fine but because i've got a drum sander now i'm going to be using it for this application i do not recommend using a planer to flatten an in-grain cutting board i see some people on youtube doing it without any consequences but i personally have had one explode in my planer before so i'm going to use the drum sander for this because it's a much better application for an end grain board once the board is flat i then trim up the edges and prepare it for sanding most woodworkers i know i don't like sanding and even fewer like watching it on youtube so i'm going to skip through this pretty quickly but i do want to highlight that i start my sanding in 80 grit and work my way up to 120 i do water pop between 180 and 220 that just gives the fibers a chance to swell with water and gives you a chance to knock them back down so the cutting board remains smooth after the first time you get it wet i'll be adding a juice group to this cutting board and to do that i'll be using my cnc i attach it to the spoil board using some painters tape and some ca glue and then let the cnc do the rest of the work [Music] with the juice groove cut the last two steps are to apply the cutting board feet and apply the finish i generally apply cutting board feet to any large cutting board one because i think it makes it look good on a countertop where it's going to be a staple feature of the kitchen and it also helps prevent lateral movement whenever you're doing heavy cutting on the board lastly it's time to apply the finish for the cutting board and for this we'll be using food safe mineral oil not only does it bring out the vibrant colors of the board but it also provides lasting protection [Music] now that the finish is applied i gotta say this is a really fun build and i'm already thinking about different types of wood i could use to get a different color combination to tweak the way this thing looks i did notice that as the finish dry there is a brown tinge to some of the central maple boards and i don't know what's causing that so if you know please let me know in the comments section below make sure you subscribe because i come out with this type of content all the time all right i'll see you on the next one [Music]

Channel: Eigen Designs

Views: 28,826

Keywords: diamond, diamond patterm, diamond pattern, DIY, cutting board, cool cutting board, how to make a cutting board, infinite diamond

Id: LQJRV5FFkvw

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022