Jointing and planing questions

Joe,
If I'm reading you correctly, you're proposing to try to plane stips (1-2" wide) laid sideways in the machine.  I envision exploding wood chucks flying every whichaway.  Most planer heads want at least 9-10 inches in length.

As for your glue choice, I suggest you change to epoxy (NOT the 5-min junk).  By reputation, TB-3 is degraded by water.  Cutting boards have to be scrubbed.  Epoxy, OTH epoxy will be there forever, and the fuz will only strengthen the joint.

I've made one cutting board using epoxy and noticed the joints opening up after about a week of use. It wasn't the 5-minute epoxy but I don't remember the brand. We had some extra at the commercial shop I was working at. I did some internet searches and it seemed that Titebond III was the most often recommended adhesive so I tried it. The cutting board has been fine for about five years. I believe most manufactured wood countertops are made with urea formaldehyde (aka plastic resin).

I have made dozens of  cutting boards, some of them almost sixty years ago.  Most of them were edge grain, just strips glued together and planed or sanded flat.  I have used epoxy, plastic resin, Urea formaldehyde and Titebond 2 and III.  If I were to make one now, I would use Titebond III.  Most of the end grain boards were the ones made from strips, cross cut and turned on end and rotated to make a brick pattern.  Some were random triangular pieces carefully fitted into rectangular blocks and then the blocks were glued together.  Before I got a drum sander (Performax) I glued a sacrificial piece on the trailing edge of the end grain boards and ran them through my Dewalt planer.  Light passes worked well.  Without the piece on the trailing edge, the back end would explode.  The drum sander does a good and easy job of flattening the end grain ones.  I have also used a 4 x 24 belt sander.  Don't get me started on juice grooves.  

My favorite ones are round.  I glue them up end grain, cut them round on the bandsaw,  flatten one side on the lathe and cleanup the edge, turn a groove in the edge for a finger hold,  and Cock the other side so that it is sloped and the juice runs down next to the rim.  The flat side is slightly dished and is for veggies, the sloping side is for meat, nice rare juicy meat.  My lathe is big enough to make them 16" in diameter.

I have fixed defects in the surface by drilling a hole and inserting a matching or contrasting piece of hardwood dowel.  I finish them with walnut oil.  I like them to have a slightly concave surface so they rest on the four corners.  The ones for bakers to roll dough on need to be flat unless you turn them a rolling pin with a matching curve.  None of them are dishwasher safe, be sure the users know that.

I believe you are jointing both sides of the laminated plank before crosscutting? The issue is with tearout on the ends of the pieces? Moving forward, I would suggest a finer tooth crosscut blade, using a zero clearance insert (if on the tablesaw) or sacrificial bottom board if using a chopsaw that doesn't have a replaceable insert. I would also additionally tape the cutlines with masking tape to limit the amount of tearout. Reducing the feed rate of material should also help. Light sanding or skimming with a finely set hand plane should handle any existing pieces. 

I've never tried running parallel grain through a planer or jointer, and would suggest Barry is correct.

Tightbond III is an excellent glue. the board (rescued scraps from a bowl project) in the picture below is a daily user and gets run under hot water and scrubbed with soap multiple times a day. Never in the dishwasher though!


Good luck!

Sorry, but I don't understand why you need to joint and thickness before the second glue up. you glued up the long strips, planed them and crosscut them, the flip the crosscut pieces so that the end grain is facing up, then just glue them together to get your end-grain board. Why do they need to be jointed and thickness planed?

free photo hostingAll,  The assembled strips were cut with an 80 tooth cross cut blade and zero clearance insert.  Very clean cuts.  The jointer surface was lightly rough as previously mentioned.  I took less than 1/32" per cut.  No blow-out.  The planer surface was smoother.  Again, light cuts.  No blow-out.   Overall, there was virtually no splintering.  All of the cut edges were very clean.  I am happy wit the result and was able to do the second glue-up without issue.  Titebond 3.  Cherry wood.

Added later 4 d 2 h 18 min 56 s:

OK - terrible job explain this.  That is on me.

1. Rip strips and glue up into conventional side grain cutting board.
   

   1. Rip

   2. surface glue surfaces (joint one side and plane the other)

   3. glue into side grain cutting board

2. Slice the cutting board across the grain with slices that will be turned up on end-grain and glued side to side.  Flip the slices around to get interesting pattern, color, etc.
   

   1. If I had a planer or thickness sander large enough to surface the entire blank, I would have done so.  I don't.  So I sliced up the blank first, then surfaced the individual strips.

   2. Slice across grain on table saw.  The slice width will be the nominal cutting board thickness.

   3. Because the ripped strips, when glued, were not completely co-planer, each strip (approximate 18" long) were passed over the jointer, then the planer to clean up each side.  This eliminated the slight variations in the original board blank and removed some of the glue squeeze out.   The first photo shows the slices still laying on the side grain indicating the direction of the wood grain and the direction that the slices will be passed through the machines.

3. Flip the newly surfaced slices onto the end grain and arrange the slides in a desirable end grain pattern for glue up.  I selected a brick pattern.

4. Glue up the slices into a new, end grain panel.

5. Trim the edges square and surface the new board.  Will probably use a router in a sled with a surfacing bit.

6. Cut the juice groove and the handle recesses if desired.

7. Round over the edges.

8. Sand and finish.  I'm using Mahoney's walnut oil.

just a word to the wise, end grain will really soak up water and fast. I made a nice end grainmaple board and wascleaningfish on it and dousing it with water, it bowed and cracked in about 4 hours. I like the end grain boards, just use minimal amounts of water for cleaning them.

“just a word to the wise, end grain will really soak up water and fast. I made a nice end grainmaple board and wascleaningfish on it and dousing it with water, it bowed and cracked in about 4 hours. I like the end grain boards, just use minimal amounts of water for cleaning them.”

The maple end grain board I made soaked up a lot of mineral oil when I oiled it - so much that I finally just stopped applying oil even though it was still soaking some up.  Wish I had weighed it before and after to see how much oil went in.  I then used a bee’s wax/mineral oil finish on it.  It just won’t soak up any water when I wash it.   I’ve probably only rewaxed it once or twice in a decade of use and it is still going strong.

Good advice, Gary.  thanks.  

I'll post pictures when I complete them.

Just an FYI - I used Titebond III for the glue and it has held up well.  Should work for you.