This blog post is ultimately about surfacing end grain wood with a power planer. The project begins with a blank being made from Ash, and the final project is a CNC engraved baseball game that uses dice to move players around the board in a “baseball game”.
The blank is planed on the faces to make nice end grain panels that will be edge-glued to make the face of the panel an end grain face. If you’re making a cutting board, for example, the same methods shown here would apply, The blank I’m working on is three inches thick, so it’s nearly at the maximum cut that I can make with my table saw, and more than I can make with my radial arm saw. A chop saw could do this, but I’ve never tried to cut this much this precise with a chop saw. Even though we are going to plane this, the amount of planing work needs to be kept to a minimum. This next video shows cutting the panel pieces.
After cutting these pieces the panels will be glued together and orientation will be looked at for a pattern or for randomization.
Now that we have panels made, the planer is next. I added (off camera) a pine end board that is cross grain glued to the panel. Doing this and leaving the board there would create a cracking problem, but this will be cut off later on. I’ll also use this to screw the panel to the CNC machine later on.
As explained in the video, this is about the safest way to plane end-grain material. I saw this the first time being done by a man using a much larger planer and found out that one must have a spiral head cutter and sharp carbide cutters. The end board is very important, and if it isn’t there, major tear out and possible machine damage could occur. This is the fear that many have with end grain cutting. Another important item is the board have no splits in the grain, this was mentioned in the video but must be brought out again. My planer has two speeds, I’m using the slowest feed speed so I don’t grab too much material at a time. Cutting slow and light is very important here.
Well, as promised here is the finished project and a few pointers on how to do engraving backfill. Starting off is a video explaining how we got to the point we’re at now… and the finished project.
So after that explanation, I have a video clip of finish sanding the board that I showed as not properly handled for coloring. You can see that it isn’t a lot of work for a sander and 180 grit paper, once I’ve cleaned the board off, it will get a run of 220 grit and round-overs on the edges to dress it up a bit. Then the final coats of finish go on.
I did not show the round-over work, nor the finishing work as that is the same as other projects. Trimming the edges requires setting one side square with the engraving and then using a sled I cut that side, then square the rest of the board from that edge. I cut off the pine board on the bottom on the glue line with gives me the right boarder size.
Now lets add some feet to the bottom of the finished board
If you enjoyed learning about this project, and would like to see me attempt something else, please make a comment and I’ll entertain the idea.