I left off last week prepared to cut up the board on my table saw with my simple sled to make repeatable cuts. I had read over and over that a good table saw sled must be squared up to the table. I agree, but for my first sled, I figured it would actually be kinda cool to make strips that had a taper that would offset when glued back together. And that allowed me to make the sled faster.

When I had the board cut up, I prepared to glue up in my new clamps that turned out to be incredibly finnicky. I’m going to reach out to amazon because they’ve just gotten worse.

While it looks like an end grain orientation, this was just the setup for gluing. You can see the alternating tapers where the ends are alternating higher and lower.

I’ve long known to avoid making cutting boards with pieces that meet exactly at four corners because the all-glue middle points are much weaker than where wood is glued to wood. So I offset the pieces in the second glue-up.

The slight taper isn’t completely visible from this angle.

With the glue dry, it was time for the second round of planing.

The board was mostly even, but there were some low spots I had to get out.

I should have been a little more careful in that corner in the gluing phase.

I flipped to the other side and found another low point.

But the planing depth was very low, so I didn’t actually remove that much material to get this thing flat.

And then it was on to sanding to get the thing smooth and ready for the finishing steps of my second cutting board.

More next week.