mixing grain cutting vs chess boards

[John Kananis]

Nobody makes 3/4 end grain cutting boards because they'll warp and fall apart quickly.

Cutting board with substrate...hmm, time and a place. Instead, just use sound theory when assembling one.

As far as the OP, veneer (not so challenging for this type of project, you don't even need a vacuum press) or it'll crack. There are ways to make a chess board with solid wood but it would involve a lot deeper understanding of wood movement and joinery.

Using Baltic birch as backing to an end grain board...I don't even know how to respond to this. Joking?

by this logic we should start making cutting boards with substrate. let me know how that goes over.

"desirability of solid wood" is a myth? maybe not sustainable but far from a myth. why do people desire 1.5 and 2" thick end grain cutting boards? dont see many 3/4" out there. face grain maybe but thats it. i even make those, but my ~18x24"x1.5" end grain boards are the most coveted by friends and family that buy them. maybe i'll make one with a baltic birch backing and see how that sells. or maybe not.

[Charlie Fox]

ok then how about a joint like this with bisquits ?

DISCALIMER - THIS IS NOT A REAL JOINT. I AM NOT GOING TO GLUE THIS. THIS IS LOOSE STOCK IN A MOCK UP FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY



IMG_6627.jpg

[Clint Baxter]

wow guys, settle down - the board is already made so no going back on it. i was mainly asking in the OP "wondering if anyone has any experience to share considering all the above"
so apparently no one does.

my next point is i already have a fair amount of 6/4 walnut and white oak so i will either make cutting boards or chess boards. i prefer the chess at this point.

Charlie, I made a chessboard of a similar type when I was in shop class in high school. It was 1-3/4" thick maple and black walnut in the field of the board, and had 6" wide sides of black walnut. The outer border pieces were mitered together and glued to the chessboard center. It lasted a couple of years, if I remember correctly, before it self-destructed, blowing out one of the miter joints with most of one side separating from the chessboard center piece. I used a three step Seal-A-Cell finish on it IIRC.

I made that piece back in 1973, so some of the details may not be the clearest, but I learned from that piece that one needs to build pieces that accommodate the expansion and contraction of the finished piece.

Unfortunately, I've evidently not learned that well enough, as seen in this recent piece I did. IMG_4326.jpg I thought these would be okay and expand and contract evenly, but the outer rim expanded much more than the center, splitting apart all three of these game boards that I made this year. They were constructed during the winter, which is quite dry here in ND. When everything warmed up and our relative humidity climbed, I ended up with a bunch of split game boards.

[John Kananis]

Biscuits are not meant for this type of thing (nor are Dominos if your brain just went there). That's pretty much a breadboard end - if attached a such (without gluing) it'll keep the pieces together but you'll have the main part of the board either proud or shy of the length of the breadboards depending on which season it is.

ok then how about a joint like this with bisquits ?

DISCALIMER - THIS IS NOT A REAL JOINT. I AM NOT GOING TO GLUE THIS. THIS IS LOOSE STOCK IN A MOCK UP FOR DEMONSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY



IMG_6627.jpg

[Cameron Wood]

Biscuits are not meant for this type of thing (nor are Dominos if your brain just went there). That's pretty much a breadboard end - if attached a such (without gluing) it'll keep the pieces together but you'll have the main part of the board either proud or shy of the length of the breadboards depending on which season it is.

The border piece is end grain, so it should have compatible movement with the field pieces.

[John Kananis]

Good eye, didn't notice that.

I still wouldn't biscuit. We've dowels would be better, Dominos work there too but idk, I still think it's... misguided.

The border piece is end grain, so it should have compatible movement with the field pieces.

[Cameron Wood]

Charlie, I made a chessboard of a similar type when I was in shop class in high school. It was 1-3/4" thick maple and black walnut in the field of the board, and had 6" wide sides of black walnut. The outer border pieces were mitered together and glued to the chessboard center. It lasted a couple of years, if I remember correctly, before it self-destructed, blowing out one of the miter joints with most of one side separating from the chessboard center piece. I used a three step Seal-A-Cell finish on it IIRC.

I made that piece back in 1973, so some of the details may not be the clearest, but I learned from that piece that one needs to build pieces that accommodate the expansion and contraction of the finished piece.

Unfortunately, I've evidently not learned that well enough, as seen in this recent piece I did. IMG_4326.jpg I thought these would be okay and expand and contract evenly, but the outer rim expanded much more than the center, splitting apart all three of these game boards that I made this year. They were constructed during the winter, which is quite dry here in ND. When everything warmed up and our relative humidity climbed, I ended up with a bunch of split game boards.

I made a similar small round piece from scrap a while ago, & ended up leaving one joint open, and fitted a small key in the edge, across the joint to allow movement.

This was the result of playing around with an offcut of close grain timber. It was air dried many years, and solid when I put it together, but checks opened up, and vary in size noticeably over time. Possibly it involved compression set from the moisture in the glue, or from the finish. About 3/4" thick. I was not expecting this to perform well, or to last.

IMG_4349.jpeg

[Richard Coers]

so one question unanswered was where and how do you think it will fail?

Did you not look at the pictures. I showed you exactly how they will fail.

[Mike Mason]

I won't add much to what has been said already many times, but four things come to mind:

1. In Junior HS, we were all required to make a solid top table that they had us frame with solid stock and mitered corners. Of course, the miters opened up after a year or two. You would have thought that someone in a large urban school district (a city of 650,000 people) would have known better than to incorporate cross-grain construction in the design of a project that every school required every boy to make. Every year, at all the schools, all male students had to make the same table; I wonder how many thousands of tables were made this way (i.e., incorrectly)?

2. I made about two dozen chessboards for sale about 15 years ago, and I used 1/4" solid stock that was centrally glued onto a sheet good substrate, running all of the grain in the same direction. I made a solid wood trim molding with mitered corners that was securely glued to the sheet good substrate and overlapped the 1/4" solid stock by 1/16" (i.e., it wasn't attached to the 1/4" solid stock) so that the 1/4" solid wood could move around a bit. Potential problem avoided.

3. I made a pair of lighted Asian-style tables with four-part "pinwheel" tops surrounding a central Motawi tile, and I only glued the pinwheel parts together at the very middle near the tile, but kept them in the same plane with a loose spline. They have stayed perfectly aligned and without gaps for a couple of years now.

4. I have to agree with everyone else, it seems that the OP is hoping to get people to agree with his thoughts, but once again science will win out - avoiding cross-grain construction, unless there is freedom of movement designed in, is woodworking 101 (except in a certain metropolitan school district in the early 1970's - see #1 above).

[al ladd]

"i have a 10 year old mesquite natural edge coffee table with cross grain ends - glues with epoxy. still perfect but of curse some of you eill say just wait another year."

Mesquite is among the most dimensionally stable woods in the world. Not relevant at all to walnut and maple (maple is especially bad)....