Flattening Cutting Board

[Shane Sura]

Hi folks,
I am having a devil of a time flattening a cutting board I am making. I am making one of the checkerboard courtesy of tWW. I made it out of Purpleheart and hard Maple. I am right after the first glue up and trying to flatten the board. I cannot for the life of me get it flat. I have tried my ROS, Belt Sander, and plane. The Plane takes gouges out of the purpleheart and keeps making it worse and the Belt Sander seems to be taking forever with little progress. Am I missing something or do I just need patience? The plane is really irritating me but part of it is I am still learning to properly use a plane. I would use my planer but the last time I used it on a cutting board it met with a shattering disaster. Any ideas?


Shane

[paul wiser]

is this an end grain cutting board?? if it is good luck. will take a lot of patience and sanding.

[Shane Sura]

It will be an end grain cutting board. Right now I am working on the long grain part.


Shane

[Dennis Montgomery]

I know you don't want to hear this, but there are some projects where a specific tool is needed to get the job done right and quick. I make a lot of cutting boards and I wouldn't do them if I didn't have a drum sander. There is just no good way to get an end grain board perfectly flat without one. I burned up a ROS last year trying to flatten a board before I bit the bullet and bought the drum sander.

[Shane Sura]

I was hoping that would not be the case. I would love to have a drum sander but my God how expensive does one tool have to be. I don't even understand why drum sanders are so expensive. It seems to me they would be a similar mechanism to a planer or other such tools but are way over those prices. I just don't see how I can fit that in when I just bought a new TS. What I don't understand is why my Belt Sander is not working well.


Shane

[J. Z. Guest]

Shane, I'm having the same problem. I started a maple/cherry cutting board from Woodsmith a couple months ago, and it is miraculously twisted, even though I jointed & planed all the individual board before glue-up.

I agree with Dennis. Stop wasting your time & energy and take it somewhere to have it run though a drum sander. All my local hardwood lumber stores have this service for a low fee.

One other thing, don't try to flatten it until you've got it ALL glued-up. Otherwise, you're REALLY in for some frustration.

[Nathan Conner]

Hey, Shane. There are several techniques to use. I just finished 4 of those boards, and I found some stuff out that may make it easier.

The first thing to do is go over by your PowerMatic 20" planer.... Yeah, it was a JOY to have the "flattening work" done in 14 seconds, both sides. But it kind of takes the fun out of it. I might as well dump some scraps into a huge machine that spits out perfectly finished furniture while I stand by and drink a Guinness. Actually, that's an idea!

But I digress. What I did before I had one of these is make lots of cross marks with a carpenter's pencil (basically, squiggly big arcing lines everywhere) and then hit it with the coarsest grit ( I think I was using 30 or 50 ) on the belt sander. This left the pencil lines where it was low and let me work my way up in grit as the penciled areas got smaller. Was it perfect? Naah, but good enough for a decent glue up. But just you WAIT until you get to the next glue up - final flattening on the end-grain side requires a REALLY sharp end-grain plane, or a lot of patience.

Another option is to use the router and set up a little "flattening jig" with a 3/4" or so wide flat-bottomed bit. You can find lots of techniques on SMC about flattening large tables using this technique, and I'm sure it would be quick enough to set a little jig up, clamp it in place and take a few light passes with the router to get as close to flat as possible, then finish up with some light passes with 220 on the ROS.

Good luck! And don't forget - if you're taking the router trip, you may want to consider gluing some scrap boards on all 4 edges so that tearout on the ends doesn't become an issue (or a tippy ROS or belt sander rounding down the ends) - DAMHIKT - then you can rip the scraps off at the end.

[David DeCristoforo]

Good thing you didn't post in the "neander" forum! The belt sander is your "best" option. But you gotta remember that this is just like any other tool and any other process. You have to "get the hang of it". Nathan's pencil line thing will be a huge help is seeing where the high spots are. And now (another drum roll) the "secret". Get yourself some 50 or 60 grit belts to "rough it down" with. This will leave hella deep scratches that you will have to sand out but at least you won't be there for a month trying to grind the thing down. And if you really want it "perfectly flat", re-read Jeremy's reply

[Greg Cuetara]

One idea....if you take a few longer strips...by about 6"-8" off each end...even 12" if you have long enough scraps. Glue them to the sides of your cutting board and then put it through the planer. Take a million passes on each side, meaning take very very light passes as the end grain is hard to cut. The boards you glued to the sides will allow the infeed and outfeed rollers to take hold of the board and run it through the planer safely. I made an end grain board for christmas and when I first put it through the planer it shot back out and almost hit me...I put a few strips on the sides and it went through smoothly. After you get to your final thickness take it over to the TS and cut off the strips then you only have to sand the edges. Voila and there you go another masterpiece cutting board.
Good Luck,
Greg

[Dan Barr]

The following book has a plan on haw to make your own thickness sander. this is a worthwhile project considering that it will come in handy in the future and is going to be cheaper than buying a drum sander. only downside is that youre going to spend your time building it.

-It is one of the ones from "The Workshop Companion" set.
-Title: "Sanding and Planing"
-Author: Nick Engler

Page 95 (or chapter 7)

you can pick this up on amazon for $2.64 and shipping

Here is the link to the amazon page.

http://www.amazon.com/Sanding-Planin...8319455&sr=8-1

ciao,

dan

[glenn bradley]

I was hoping that would not be the case. I would love to have a drum sander but my God how expensive does one tool have to be. I don't even understand why drum sanders are so expensive.

I am with you there. Drum sanders are one of the tools that really needs to be re-priced. Maybe once upon a time they were expensive to make but come on. I have seen $1000 units that were distressingly poor in quality.

I'm thinking if they dropped the price 20% they would sell 50% more of them. Oh, and as long as I'm dreaming, make the $1000 ones at least as well as a $300 planer will you?

Sorry, feeling grouchy I guess.

[Joe Chritz]

If you are sanding end grain it takes forever to sand. Even finishing up after a drum sander takes some time.

I use a drum sander but if you don't have one and want to save your sanity take your board to a cabinet shop and for $10 they will most likely sanding it for you on a wide belt.

Sharp blades and tiny cuts and you can use a planer but one "oops" and you are back at square one.

Joe

[Dave MacArthur]

I'd go with a router sled for this. Rip 6 boards out of MDF; put two side vertical rails on an MDF base just larger than your cutting board, make the side rails just 1/2" taller than your cutting board when laid in there. Screw them onto the sides of the base.

Now screw the other 4 boards into what looks like the frame for a skinny cabinet door. Lay it on top of the base and side rails, stick your router on top of it in the slot, adjust your bit down to lowest part of the cutting board, fire it up and start sliding it back and forth. Take you 10 min to build the jig and 5 min to flatten the board without issues.

[Peter Quinn]

Another vote for take it some where. When I make passage doors in my small shop I take them to a millwork shop, pay the $75/hr shop fee to have them run through the wide belt while I drink my coffee, and leave smiling. It takes them minutes to do what would take me hours or days. Plus it makes me feel modern, i say to my self "My company is out sourcing certain aspects of the project for increased productivity."

Its easier to avoid mistakes than fix them, so a careful analysis of how you arrived at this twisted place may be in order. I start with accurate milling, careful layout and controlled glue ups, but sometimes things still get off, or the darn wood moves a little, or the gremlins get back into the shop before the glue has set. When making 'adjustments' to the visible face of a work piece the belt sander is always my last option as it tends to add as many problems to the process as it eliminates.

I have a drum sander but it has its limitations too. You said you used a 'plane' which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Which plane, how well tuned and with what skill was it operated would be my first questions. If hand work is your passion I say either invest in some very good planes (scrub, low angle jack, smooth and scraper for example) and get ready to learn a lot, or out source the rough stuff and get on to what you enjoy. Leave that belt sander for blind work.

[J. Z. Guest]

I'm glad I read this. I hadn't really considered the router flattening jig option.

For me, this may be worth considering, as I'll have to spend a few hours and probably at least $20 in gas to get to the hardwood lumber store. I wonder if I could build a jig in that amount of time?

I'm continually amazed at all the woodworking tasks that can be accomplished with a router. The only catch is that most of them require a jig, which means more time wasted on side tasks and less time spent on the actual project.