As always. I envy the pros that do this much better than I, and appreciate the advise help from Agrams when I send a random text.

A friend wanted a beast of a cutting board, 18x24, 1.5" thick, end grain and made of hard maple.

It's the largest board I've made in my simple redneck shop, but figured it would be a fun challenge.

Got it all glued up and flattened with a router but still had a small cup/bow and lots of router marks. Luckily, dads neighbor has a drum sander and ran it thru about 100x's to finish flattening and clean up router marks from my cheap bit.

Finished with pure tung oil and now it just waits to finish curing.

Also, MIL passed away and loved her home of California. Although she couldn't be buried there, familia wanted to bring some sand and tokens from her home to be be interred with her. So I threw together a cedar box with some purple epoxy (her favorite color) to fill the gaps/voids. A quick laquer finish and it was ready to go spend eternity with her remains (at least until either archaeologist dig her up, or the second coming… whichever comes first).

Also my cheap table saw doesn't have dust collection and while cutting the maple, started an ember in the pile collection under the blade. a few redneck engineering ideas and plumbing work later, voila- dust collection.

I really like the purple epoxy with the cedar. Nice!

You have some good clamping techniques for that board!

looks good. for cutting boards those pipe clamps really work well.

Thanks. I figured you'd like the southern engineered dust collection, username checks out.

1988PA-Aggie said:

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You have some good clamping techniques for that board!

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Thanks. It was definitely a challenge to work it up. In hindsight I think the way I clamped attributed to the bow/cup issue as most of the clamping force was on the top. Next time I'll drill some holes in the bottom of the jig and apply some pressure on the bottoms side of the board to help offset the top pressure.

SoulSlaveAG2005 said:

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1988PA-Aggie said:

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You have some good clamping techniques for that board!

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Thanks. It was definitely a challenge to work it up. In hindsight I think the way I clamped attributed to the bow/cup issue as most of the clamping force was on the top. Next time I'll drill some holes in the bottom of the jig and apply some pressure on the bottoms side of the board to help offset the top pressure.

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Having done many of these, it is not easy to accommodate every direction of clamping. You have three axes that you have to apply pressure to. I try to apply cauls to both the top and bottom of the piece, lined with tape of course. You have a good method by drilling the holes through the caul for the clamps, maybe try to get another caul underneath? How soon after removing from the clamps did you notice the bowing? After router flattening?

I have recently gone thicker on the rough boards, assuming some bowing will occur. Have also tried to let the boards sit for a week, maybe a month, to allow Mother Nature to do her thing. Then do final flattening and finishing.