My next project was supposed to be an end grain cutting board. I’m a member of the Lumberjocks forum and another member, LazyLarry led a group of us building a cutting board project. You may need a translator. He’s an Aussie, you know.
I only made two mistakes, so far.
My cutting board was to consist of maple, walnut and cherry. I really needed lumber two feet long. I bought the materials, but I tried to cheap it out and thought I could get by with one foot of a wider piece and just make it double. Hardwood has become very expensive.
This results in two mistakes all by itself. One; how do I handle the part where the ends meet? And Two; according to Grizzly, we should never joint material shorter than 12″ long. This is a safety issue. And shorter pieces are more likely to end up with sipe.
The second mistake was that even though I had a jointer, I had almost never used it. I really didn’t know how it works. I also didn’t know all of the safety practices.
I studied the Grizzly manual in depth and then I practiced using scrap material. I can tell you that the practice was definitely worth while. Part of the education was to understand how to set up the machine and to make adjustments. It would have been very frustrating to ruin good hardwood to learn the process.
My thoughts now are to make a complete project using only scrap wood.
It may be a long time before you get to see my finished cutting board.
Practice using scrap or buy twice as much hardwood.
This was a rule long before I became involved with woodworking and I almost broke it right out of the gate. I guess that would be my lesson too.