End Grain Cutting Board

With my wife's birthday coming up, I wanted to surprise her with something fun. She's a big fan of fancy kitchen stuff and had been eyeing my mom's custom butcher block from a couple Christmases ago, so I decided to make a high-end cutting board. I found some popular plans from another blog to help with this.

I purchased some purple heart and hard maple from a local supplier. Purple heart is extremely hard and dense. It's also rather expensive.
 

The varying thickness of the cuts will make a fun pattern when everything is complete. The next step is to alternate colors and glue it back together.
 

Once everything cures, it's back to the table saw to cut it again. It feels a little silly at first to glue pieces together only to cut them apart again, but it's entirely necessary to achieve an end grain cutting board, which are higher quality boards considered better for chef's knives. The easier way is just to mill a board to a long grain cutting board, but that would have been too easy.


The newly-cut pieces are turned sideways (end-grain up) and alternated in direction before being glued together. Several of the original pieces, seen in the background, had pits, breaks, or other problems with them that made them unsuitable for a cutting board. As a result, the final board ended up shorter than I had planned, but it's still a good size.


Unfortunately, an end grain piece can't go through my friend's planer safely, so achieving a uniform thickness on all surfaces turned into a couple hours on his belt sander instead. It took forever, but the result was nice. After that, a hand sander smoothed out the board with finer sand paper.


The board was seasoned with several coats of butcher block oil. Here you can see the first coat adding some character to the wood.


Lastly, I added some rubber feet to the board. A block like this would be fine without the feet, but I wanted them to help prevent slipping on the counter, to help the board dry after washing, and because of a knot on the underside that I worried might otherwise trap food particles.





Despite its size, the cutting board was my most ambitious project to date, in part because I lacked the tools to do the cuts, planes, and sanding. With the proper tools in the garage, this would have been a lot easier, but still rather time consuming.

The board itself turned out great and my wife was ecstatic. She refused to use it for a while, worrying that she'd ruin it. Now she uses it all the time. It's something I hope will last for a long, long time.

Folding Workbench

I made my own workbench from a very sturdy, solid (65 lbs) door just a year ago using plans from another blog. It has been a great bench, but I find myself increasingly running out of space as heavy tools, like the heavy scroll saw, increasingly find a permanent location on the bench.

I needed a work space that would be kept clear to use for occasional projects. If nothing will be atop the new bench most of the time, it would be nice to have it store away easily to take up less garage space, so I set about creating a folding workbench.

I started by mounting a 2x4 at the same height as my existing workbench.


The legs were also made from 2x4. To make them sturdier, I cut some rabbet joints. Lacking fancier tools, I used a circular saw to make the initial cuts, followed by the hammer and then the chisel to smooth it out. The three legs were all cut at once, which saved a bit of time.



A neighbor moved out and gave us the top to a modular desk she was about to throw away. With one straight side, it's a perfect fit. In a pinch, another solid wood core door would have worked, too, but the desk is larger and has a fun shape.


The legs are mounted along a 2x4, which is connected by a couple hinges. A 2x3 along the bottom of the legs lends the bench more stability. The 2x3 has rabbets cut into it the same way as before, which help support the legs and make it look nicer.


Three strong hinges are added to connect the bench to the wall's studs. They don't support the bench when it's down--the 2x4 on the wall does that--but they support the full weight of the bench when it's folded up, so it's important they're robust.

The bench turned out well. It's easy to pull out and fold away with the gate latch up top and it's large enough and strong enough for most weekend projects.

Suspended Garage Shelves

We moved into a new house and missed the terrific shelf space from the last garage. Unfortunately, the new garage didn't have enough space on the side to add shelves, so we opted to add shelves suspended from the ceiling instead.

The main shelf was added aside the door. I used the cheaper OSB this time, rather than the nicer plywood. It's just as sturdy and works well in the garage, especially where the walls aren't painted.

I built the wooden lattice and attached some temporary wall supports and vertical support to make installation easier. The OSB had to be added before the permanent suspended reports because there's no way to put it in afterwards.


After the permanent supports are added, the shelf is large and sturdy. It's 4 feet deep and about 12 feet long. The temporary supports were removed for a cleaner look.


I also installed two smaller shelves above the rolling garage door. I would have liked to make these longer, but the garage has a load-bearing support that gets in the way. Still, they're unobtrusive and completely unnoticeable from outside the garage.

Trundle Bed Refiinishing

We found a trundle bed at a garage sale. While functional, the original finish was hideous. I'm pretty sure it was an off-white yellow, but my wife is certain it contained a hint of pink that "doesn't exist on any color palette."
 

My first thought was to use paint stripper on every surface. This kind of worked, but was slow and arduous and left behind a sticky residue that I still needed to sand off.


In the end, I used the quarter sander again to remove the paint. It was also slow, but did a good, clean job. It was made easier by pulling all the pieces apart, even beyond the finishing nails holding it together.


After everything was sanded and reassembled, I stained it and added a coat of polyurethane. This was much easier on the bed than on the kitchen table. The softer wood on the bed took the stain easily and the bed was much more forgiving of little mistakes.

Kitchen Table Refinishing

The kitchen table was beautiful when we got it, but almost a decade later it was showing some wear.


Not only had some parts chipped off, but some permanent finish discoloration occurred when some heated bottles were placed on it without enough insulation.


The first step was to sand everything down. I used this hand sander, but if I had it to do again I might have checked into getting a belt sander with a low grit. This took quite a while.



The edges were marred as well, so I lightly sanded them. Once everything is done, the slight difference in shape won't be noticeable.


The stain goes on really dark, enough to be a little worried. But when the excess is wiped off a few minutes later, the hardwood has some great color to it.




At this point, it's time for a finish. I used polyurethane in several light, diluted coats. This was a learning experience the first time around as I actually messed up badly and had to start completely over, re-sanding everything from scratch. Fortunately, the hardwood veneer was barely thick enough to withstand a second sanding. After the polyurethane, the table has a beautiful shine to it.



Back in the kitchen, good as new!

Garage Shelves

Our garage was a mess. Sure, we could find everything easily, but only because it was all dumped into a big pile on the side of the garage.


First, a trip to the hardware store for some lumber. We got a mix of 2x3 for the shelves (left), 2x4 for the vertical supports (center), and cut plywood (right). Hardware stores will cut plywood for you if you ask, which results in a much straighter and cleaner cut than I could make at home. I could just as easily have used OSB instead, but the plywood looks nicer.


2x3 boards are attached to the walls at the studs with nails and screws. The number of fasteners I use was probably overkill, but I'd rather too many than too few. The lowest shelf is intentionally shorter to fit bigger items.


Rather than having to support (or have someone hold) the shelves as I build them, I stage them up beforehand.


The shelves are attached to the vertical 2x4 boards. They can rest on the wall supports while we install them.


Once assembled, it's impressive how quickly these get filled up. There's still space for more items and the garage is much, much cleaner.

Keyboard & Mouse Painting

I thought it would be cool to have some customized hardware to go with the CPU window from the previous post, so I grabbed some automotive primer and paint for a fun, shiny look.

First, everything was sanded down and taped off.


Several coats later, everything looks shiny.

 

A clear protective coat will stop the paint from rubbing off, which is especially important on the mouse as it will rub against hands frequently.

The keyboard and mouse are reassembled to make a nice, matching pair. The keyboard's LEDs have been swapped for blue to match the CPU case.