Scrap Wood Cutting Board

 

If i won the Hurricane Laser contest I would remake most of my projects especially this one so i can make them perfect. I would also start to make prototype for a wearable robotic suit of armour I am designing.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPESWaHLxU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPESWaHLxU&feature=g-upl

In this tutorial I am going to show you step to step, how to make your own stylish and inventive CD rack. It can hold more than CDs and can be altered to fit much bigger things. In this I will leave a gap so a CD player can be fitted. there are a few tools and the material is entirely up to you. For this tutorial I have used Oak from a locally sourced wood merchant. take care and follow the steps to detail.

Tools:
-hammer
-nails
-drill
-drill bits
-miller drill
-pillar drill
-band saw
-jig saw
-screws
-ruler
-saw
-set square
-protractor
-pen/pencil
-safety goggles
-soldering iron


Materials
-wood/acrylic( i used oak)
-scrap wood
-dowel
-solder
-paper
-cardboard
-circuit board

Step 1Planning and design.

I had to think quite a bit on the structural design of this project as I was going to hold a lot of weight and would only be supported by a wall.
The pictures below are from CAD they should help with planing etc. there is also a cutting list in which you may or may not use depending on the size you want. Using CAD programs like Pro Desktop are really useful. i would forward a link but Pro desktop is quite expensive and things like Google Sketch up are a lot easier to use and it is FREE!!!!

Step 2CAD/Pro-desktop

To make some more neat designs i used one of my favourite programs called Pro-desktop. On the program i was able to uses all of my measurements and angles to construct each piece i needed. these took a while as i had to recreate sketches on a computer using exact measurements.

The useful thing about pro-desktop is that you are able to extrude or indent any piece. you can do a lot more than just draw things.

The pieces I constructed where in two groups; Top slots and Bottom Slots. The top slots had their slots on the top and the bottom slots slip onto the top slots with their slots on the bottom. This was easier said than done in the Pro desktop program. A series of Alignments and Matings had to be set in place to construct the final CAD model(below).

I highly recommend any one how is buying Pro-desktop to buy a HOW-TO book with it. As it is a lot harder than you may think it is.

The final CAD model enabled me to look at any design faults or changes i could make.

As seen in the picture the Green pieces where too tall, so these were reduced in the final making stages. I also have made the middle 3x2 instead of the 2x2 seen below. This means there is more space for my CD player and Speakers.

When i did make the pieces bigger it meant that i had more pieces, this only meant more construction time plus the benefit of more storage.

Step 3Construction Log 1

03/11/11
I have begun to think of ways I can incorporate jigs into my design. This is because jigs can make numerous products that are exactly the same. The reason for starting to look at jigs is because I think it will be the most time consuming and tricky part of this project. I have thought of four necessary jigs that can be used to make the unit precise  and accurate. The first is for the curve of each shelve, there are 8 different sizes which means a lot of moving about, and so the best way to make them to the exact size would be to have a multifunctional jig. This will take a lot of measuring and quite a bit of patience. The 2nd and 3rd jigs are for the speaker cubes and the forth is for the slots of each shelf.

04/11/11
Having a break from the jigs as they are very fiddly. I am making a model out of cardboard. It is full size and the curves are very accurate as I have used a big compass and a set square to mark them out. My first thoughts are that the unit will fit snug on a wall but the pugs which hold it there may take up quite a bit of room. It can hold 15 CDs in each full box.

07/11/11
I have finished the model, which can hold all of the CDs needed and still sits on the wall. I can’t put any heavier weight on it as it will collapse. This is not surprising because it is cardboard.

10/11/11
I have chosen the material I am going to use. It is a locally sourced oak which has come from a sustainable foresting company. The trunk planks come at 15mm thick but have curves and bumps in, this is okay because the thickness of each shelf is going to be 10mm so I have plenty of room for planning and sanding.

11/11/11
I have begun work on the first jig. It consists of three parts: the frame, the holder, and the marker. I have just made it from scrap ply wood as it does not need to look amazing. This jig is to get the perfect curve so I need to do a lot of measurement to get the pieces exactly right.

Step 4Construction Log 2

13/11/11
When trying to use the jig I kept on pushing the wood to the side, so I added supports to the jigs so that it would not slip about. After this I drew out the curves on all of the bits of wood, and cut them using the band saw. I have noticed that the jig has a minor flaw as I used rope and a pencil to make the curve arm the rope stretched a bit. This has meant that some pieces are not the same size, but I can sort this be sanding them down. I will use wire next time I mark them out.

15/11/11
I have begun work on the speakers. I have measured all of the squares 10mm by 10mm  this was a little tricky as I was using the left over pieces from the curves I cut. This  meant that I have not be wasting the wood. Using a set square and a ruler I have also measured the slot sizes on every single separate piece.

16/11/11
I have soldered the amplifier set together, it took only about an hour but if I was mass producing it I would definitely set up a program to do it faster.  I put the pieces together with out any joints etc. and found that the 330mm by 180mm parts have to be cut down to 150mm as they are the side parts and they are only half the size of other pieces. Because of this change in measurement I have checked all the other pieces just in case.

18/11/11
Because of the slots to hold each piece together they have taken away 10mm of the original 140mm boxes, this does not matter much but I can now only hold 13 CDs in each cube. The slots are measured at half way on  each piece, some pieces have odd ones as they have slots on the top, this means they have a higher side and a lower side.

19/11/11
Cutting the pieces for the boxes was tricky as if they are too big the sides will change shape and not be a cube any more. I put them together using pins but split the wood when I did this, so I drilled holes  using a pillar drill and made dowel joints instead this looks nicer and looks professional. Some of the sides are not flush as I predicted, but I can sand them to be square as it is only out by a few millimetres at the most.

Step 5Construction Log 3

27/11/11
I have begun using the Mortiser drill to drill the 10mm slots, the problem is that it is very tight so I will have to sand or file each joint. To  put the wood into the drill I am using a jig so it is square and is safely strapped onto the drilling surface.

28/11/11
As I had predicted, the mortiser drill made the slots very tight and it is not easy to pull apart the pieces once they are in. Due to this inconvenience I will have to sand all of the slots down by had.

10/12/11
I have nine pieces left to make, this includes cutting out the wood and drilling the slots. I have completely finished the other pieces and now they are smooth with no sharp edges, fitting together nicely and look good. The next nine will have to wait till after the Christmas holiday.

12/1/12
Unfortunately in a rush I drew the slots on the wrong side( the top instead of the bottom.) This is not a problem of time but a problem of material, luckily this could be used for something else as it is a bigger piece but it is still a bit of a waste. One of the smaller pieces was dropped onto the concrete and cracked down the middle, so a replacement will also have to be made. This brings the total  not completed pieces up to 11! I have identified some problems that I will try to resolve.

17/1/12
When trying to put the pieces back together(slot in slot) it appeared that they had shrunk a bit in the cold of the workshop. So I have spent today filing and sanding them down a bit more so they snugly fit back into the opposite slots.

21/1/12
All the pieces are now cut and slotted.

24/1/12
I have sanded all the pieces using a belt sander. They are amazingly smooth to touch and slip easily into their opposite slots. Only 3 more to sand down and check!

Step 6Construction Log 4

26/1/12
To mount the frame to the wall I am going to make 6 brackets. I began by cutting 90° steel on a radial saw. Each was 4cm in length. They were really sharp once they had been cut so I filed each one down. The brackets looked a bit rough so I sand blasted each one to make it look matt and not shiny.

30/1/12
Today I made my fourth jig, it consists of a strip of metal with two holes drilled all the way through it.  It will be used to make the holes on each bracket. I have used the jig to drill all the holes in all of brackets. The drill has left sharp edges poking out so I will use a file to get rid of them again. Using a counter sink drill bit I was able to make it so the bolts lie flush with the wood. This was a really good idea because now they don’t intersect any CDs being placed onto the shelves.

2/2/12
Today I was looking at all the different types of finish and paint I could have used. This is a piece of scrap oak I found from a broken piece. I found that the paint left a very smooth surface but it hid the beautiful oak patterns, so I decided against it. I have found some bees wax, when it is applied it leaves a smooth surface as well as a little bit slippery, the joint fitted together even better when I used this.

3/2/12
I have started coating all the pieces in bees wax. I have chosen it because I like it the most and it helps each slot, slot together much more smoothly.

6/2/12
I have finished coating all of the pieces back and front. I have assembled and disassembled the whole unit twice to make sure there are no remaining faults in the wood and joints.

Step 7Plotting slots and Drilling

The plotting of each slot on each length of wood is very important. Without accuracy the whole thing would not fit together as planned. To get the best accuracy I used a number of plotting tools; a set square and a ruler.


Using the Mortiser gave me a completely square edge which meant that when the pieces are put together there will be no odd shapes or squint pieces.  The drill could only move left to right and backwards and forwards. This was good as it was all I needed to do, but it was restricted to the work top of the machine. This was only a small disruption, and to get around it I had to turn the wood around and start from the other side. In the future I would construct a larger platform for the wood to be clamped to. This would enable the processes of cutting to go a lot faster and be much easier. The drill bit was encased in a square frame which kept the cutting square.  The square frame was able to be enlarged or down sized. This was a good feature of the machine as it shows I could have used different thickness of material, like acrylic plastic sheets or a thicker wood.

Step 8Product in its environment

From these pictures of the final product you can see it is fulfilling its main function as a CD rack. From the trials users have said it looks like a designer product. I have assembled it in a number of ways, but these are not the only layouts. The material I have used is oak wood, it is a hard wood so it can withstand the occasional bump. Fully assembled the unit is 1500mm x 1350mm. The rack can hold over 300 CD’s. This is well over the expected  capacity and is a great result.

Each piece has a number of slots and some pieces have the slots on the top and others have slots on the bottom, the pieces can be put together in a number of ways. Different options have been illustrated above. Some ways may look better than others so it is probably best to see what they look like on the floor before you drill it to a wall! The  speakers are slightly less interchangeable  as they are restricted by wiring but the length between each speaker is half a metre, this means that a speaker could just go in each corner of the full structure.

Step 9

Vote!!!!!!Don't Forget to Vote!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPESWaHLxU

http://www.facebook.com/JallandDesign


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPESWaHLxU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPESWaHLxU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djPESWaHLxU

Scrap Wood Cutting Board

ditor of the Workshop and Outside channels...I'm back!

Finding ways to use up scrap wood in the shop is always a fun challenge.  This scrap wood cutting board is a great project because it's made from a wide variety of different kinds of wood that are all a bunch of different sizes - which is to say, it can be made with virtually whatever you've got lying around.  The multicolored boards work and look great in the kitchen, but the basic process of making the stripped stock material can be applied to virtually any woodworking project for a colorful outcome.  The key elements to this project are using a good waterproof, kitchen friendly glue, like Elmer's® Carpenter's® Wood Glue MAX, and adding in a few bold and colorful woods like purple heart (purple) and paduck (red) to really make the boards pop with color.

Step 1Tools and materials

I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to materials and supplies, so it's no surprise that my wood shop is filled with a lot of cut-offs that perhaps other people might just throw away.  It turns out that all these odds and ends actually have some real value for making small projects like jewelry boxes, thin strips for inlays, or joined together to form larger boards.  This Instructable shows you how to join multiple different sized boards together to make a scrap wood cutting board.  Here's what you'll need:

Tools:

• table saw
• jointer
• planer
• router with round over bit and round nose groove bit
• router table
• clamps
• cauls
• glue brushes
• palm sander

Materials:

• various scrap pieces of wood (read below for explanation)
• Elmer's® Carpenter's® Wood Glue MAX
• food safe finish such as mineral oil or butchers block oil and rags

The woods that I chose to use were basically just what I had lying around from other projects.  The cutting board contains maple, walnut, mahogany, paduck, purple heart, cherry and sapele.  I've found that one wood to stay away from using in a cutting board is a deep grained oak - the pits allow for food to build up and they are harder to clean.  How much wood you need will depend upon the size of cutting board that you're making.  I always think that it's a good idea to prepare more wood than you think you'll need because sometimes there are sections of scrap material with knots or blemishes that end up not being suitable for a project.

To be perfectly clear, when I say "scrap wood" I mean scrap hard-woods.  And at no point should you attempt to make a cutting board out of a composite material like plywood or MDF, or out of any lumber that's been treated in any way, like pressure treated lumber.

Step 2Joint an edge

If your scrap wood is already dimensioned, skip this step.  If it's got rough edges or faces from the mill, you'll need to joint and plane them first.

Use a jointer to prepare one edge.  This creates a straight edge which you can use later to push against the table saw fence to make a straight cut.  It is generally the first step that is done with any raw lumber.

If you have a face that needs to be cleaned up, run the face of the board over the jointer as well.  If your board face is wider than your jointer bed, you can cut it into a smaller piece (remember, you've now got at least one straight edge to cut against), or, use a variety of tricks by making a sled for your planer to hold the wood as it runs through directions for which can easily be found online.

Do this for all of your scrap pieces.  At the end, they should all have at least one clean edge and at least one clean face.

Step 3Plane the face

Next, take the already dimensioned face and place it face down onto your planer bed.  Run the piece of wood through your planer.  Do this with all of your boards that you are using, even if it already has two smooth faces.  This will make all of your wood the same thickness.  I try to keep my cutting boards as thick as possible so they have heft, and resist warping from exposure to moisture.

With that in mind, plane your scrap wood as little as possible.  If you have one or two boards that are thinner than the rest, save them for another project, since planing all of your wood down to that minimum thickness wouldn't be worth it.

Try to keep the boards at least 5/8" thick, and ideally, 3/4" thick, or more.

Step 4Cut into strips

This step is kind of fun - how often do you get to make "random and creative" cuts on a precision tool like a table saw?

Placing the previously jointed edge against the fence, cut strips of random width from your boards.  Don't make any strips that are too thin (less than 1/2" for example) but vary them randomly over a range of widths.

There's no right or wrong here.  If you like many stripes in your material, cut thin strips, if you want fewer strips to glue up, cut wider ones.  I cut a whole bunch of different sizes with the small ones being around 3/4" and the wide ones at around 2 1/2".  

Step 5Lay out cutting boards

Once the strips are all cut, arrange them according to your tastes.  I like putting walnut next to maple for nice contrast, and using the paduck and purple heart sparingly so that when it does show up, it really pops.  Make the cutting board whatever size you like.  mine is pretty big because I like to have a lot of room when I chop.

If you've only got a small amount of scrap material, think about making a cheese board or picnic board.  Or, make 1 large blank and cut them down into 4 smaller boards and give them as gifts.  Lots of options here.

Whatever dimensions you decide to make your board, glue them up as two separate halves that are no wider than the max width that your planer can accomodate since it saves a lot of sanding time if you an simply run the cutting board halves through the planer.  My planer can't take much more than 12", so I arranged the strips into the large cutting board that I wanted, and then split that into two groups right down the middle to keep them both narrower than 12".

Step 6Glue strips together

Seperating your cutting board strips into two groups, no wider than the max capacity of your planer, glue the strips together using Elmer's® Carpenter's® Wood Glue MAX.  I like using the Elmer's® Carpenter's® Wood Glue MAX version because it's waterproof, which is very important since these cutting boards will definitely be coming into contact with water when they got washed after use.

Lay a thin bead of glue down on each of the strips and use a chip brush to spread the glue evenly along the strip.  Clamp the strips together and use some hearty pieces of wood as cauls to keep everything in line.  Let the strips sit overnight and repeat this process for the second batch of strips.

Step 7Sand and plane again

When you remove the clamps you should now have two panels, each 1/2 the width of your cutting board.  Use a palm sander with a rough sanding pad to quickly remove the biggest glue marks on the wood.

Then, run the two boards through the planer, taking off as little material as possible on each of the faces to take off the remaining glue marks.  The boards should now be perfectly flat on both sides.

When they come out of the planer, you can really for the first time get a preview of how nice your cutting board will look.  It really pops!

Step 8Glue two parts together to form one large board

Glue the two boards together using the same technique of squeezing out a bead, spreading the glue evenly with a chip brush and finally clamping over night using cauls to keep everything aligned as mentioned in the previous step to form the full size cutting board.

Remember, the resulting glued board won't be going into the planer and will have to be sanded by hand, so take extra care when clamping to clean up squeeze out with a wet rag, and or scraper.  It's easier to clean up wet glue than to sand off the dried stuff.

Switch to a longer clamp if you have to for this glue-up since the board is starting to get pretty large.  See me using pipe clamps in the second photo below.

Step 9Sand again and trim to size

Use the palm sander to take off any glue marks and trim the ends of the board to the same length.

The cutting board I made was too wide to fit in a table saw sled or my sliding miter saw to trim the edge, so I used a circular saw and straight edge instead to cut off the uneven edge.

*Note that this will set the length of your board, so pick something that's nicely proportioned to the width and make the cut.  This can be a good time to think about whether or not you'd like the board to fit into the sink.  I have a few cutting boards that fit entirely in my sink.  I use these for cutting meat so they can be completely submerged and thoroughly washed.

The board that I am making in the picture below however is significantly larger than the average cutting board, but I still wanted it to be able to drain into my sink.  The answer here is to make at least one dimension, the length or width, and in this case the width, less than the largest dimension of your sink so at least you can wash the board at an angle in the sink and not make a mess.

Step 10Round over edges

I rounded over the top and bottom edges of the cutting board with a round over bit on the router table.  Using a round over bit with a bearing, and the router table fence as a backup makes this job very easy.

Use a sacrificial follow board as pictured in the fourth photo to prevent any tear out.

Step 11Route juice groove

I like to add a groove to one side of my cutting boards to collect the juice that accumulates so that it doesn't make a mess on the counter top.

Put the router into the plunge base attatchment and fit it with a rounded groove bit.  While there are many ways to cut a juice grove, including using the router table again with stop blocks, or the router with an edge guide, the easiest way for me is to fit the router with a simple pattern bushing and follow a rectangular piece of masonite that I cut to size as a template.

Size the template to the specific size of your cutting board, taking into account the offset of your bushing and groove bit that you use.

I used painters tape to hold the pattern board in place while I cut the grove into one half of the board.  I then spun the board, switched the tape carefully to the other side, and finished cutting the grove.

The plunge base is essential here because it allows you to plunge down into the wood to start the cut, and not have to come into the wood from the edge.

Depending on the size of your grove, cut it in one, or two passes, removing a conservative amount of material each time - better to make two easy passes than one deep, slow pass which might result in burn marks in the grove from when the router was strained.

Additionally, I don't like to make my groves too deep because they become hard to clean, and it's unrealistic that my cutting board juice groove will ever have to accomodate say, 1 cup of liquid.

Be careful coming around the corners of your template, as this is the hardest part.  To make the corners easier, simply round the corner of the pattern template on the belt sander just a bit.  This will make rounding the corner with the pattern bushing much easier than going around a sharp 90 degree turn.  Thanks for the tip Dad!

Step 12Finish sanding

With all of the woodwork done on the cutting board it's time for the final sanding.  Sand the board using a random orbital palm sander with finer and finer discs until you reach 220 grit.  I like to put items to be sanded on a expanded mesh foam pad so that they stay firmly in place.  

Step 13Apply food safe finish

The final step is to apply a food safe finish such as mineral oil or butchers block oil.

I like using a food safe gel varnish because it's easy to wipe on and off and results in a nice satin shine.

Make sure whatever finish you decide to use penetrates your wood well, and that you apply more than one coat if possible.  The wood will be exposed to a lot of moisture if you use it frequently, and keeping the finish in good condition is your best protection against warping from water damage.

If you've got any extra material leftover from this project, use it to make a Magnetic Knife Stip.