I left off last week ready to glue up my cut pieces of ash and walnut. It bears mentioning that I didn’t start out this project expecting to do an end grain cutting board. Rather, it was my cousin Neil who asked me if I’d make an end grain cutting board, and I said no because the additional steps were annoying. I’ll go into those later.

I used my DeWalt clamps as usual, but I added a set of Bora 50″ clamps. One of the pair that arrived was working freely and nicely. The other one needed more convincing. I set that aside in favor of just using three clamps (the two DeWalt and working Bora).

After the glue-up, it was on to what has fast become my favorite part of the process: hand planing.

I use a Stanley No. 5 plane to have the longest flat surface while still being reasonable to hold. That way I don’t ride dips but get rid of them.

The thing slowing down this process was using the skinny pieces. Since they weren’t as thick as the other pieces, the entire board had to be brought down to their level.

As fun as planing is, there are real benefits to cutting everything perfectly right the first time. I know I’ll get there. But I haven’t yet, so there’s more cleanup.

Once the planing was done, I took out my basic crosscut sled to cut up the board into pieces again.

And I had that decision to make about whether to go edge grain or end grain.

I lined up how edge grain would look:

and compared it to end grain.

Wow, did I ever go back and forth.

More next week!