I left off last week with a planed cutting board ready to be sanded.
I went through grits 80 to 220 with the 3M cubitron sandpaper to get the board smooth.
I decided to leave the offset pieces on during the sanding and trim once done. If I accidentally rolled over the edges while sanding with the random orbit sander.
Like with all woodworking projects that haven’t yet been finished, the colors of the wood became more muted. When I was close to getting it all smooth, I’d raise the grain.
I think I wrote about raising the grain before, but it bears writing about again. When sanding, wood fibers are torn. That’s why it gets smooth. You know, you tear them all the to same height, and they’re even. But the torn fibers swell when they get wet just like how your hair swells when it’s wet.
When freshly sanded wood gets wet and then swells, it doesn’t return to its smoothness when it dries. Rather, there’s some roughness left over from fibers that are still sticking out. That’s not a step you want to do after the finish is applied because you end up with a rough finished product. Raising the grain with water works a lot better because when it dries, sanding lightly again will get rid of those unruly fibers and make things smooth again.
I used my crosscut sled to trim off the crenulations.
I added a chamfer to the edges of the board. I learned from my first cutting board that I needed to raise the grain on the chamfers because they became rough when I finished that board with mineral oil.
After raising the grain that second time, letting it dry, and then sanding it, it was on to the mineral oil finish.
I had completed a striped edge grain cutting board and an offset patterned edge grain cutting board. I read that the only people who have end grain cutting boards are woodworkers. Next week starts my third cutting board project.
