Kitchen Spatula & Chopping Block - #4 Ripping the Maple Thin Strips

With the “brick” blanks cut and ready to go next up is the “mortar” that will go between each one of them.  I am using maple and start the same way as was done with the cherry.  First, cut to length then run through the thickness sander to match the thickness of all the pieces.  Next, rip them to width which is about ¹/₃₂” over my finished thickness of ¹/₈”.  Typically, I set the table saw fence to the width needed and cut however many strips needed like was done with the cherry pieces.  However, with these being so thin I am not comfortable in trying to cut them that way.  It puts my fingers WAY to close to the spinning blade and all sorts of things can go very wrong very fast.  I could use a push block but don’t like to rip less than ¼” with one.   My solution is to bring out a jig that lets me rip pieces to consistent width while keeping my fingers out of harms way.  The photo below shows the jig.  There is a runner that goes into the miter slot that has an arm with a brass screw run into its end.  

 

To set take a measurement from the outside tooth on the blade to the brass screw then run the screw in or out until the width matches what is needed.  In this case it’s ⁵/₃₂”.  A test cut is made to verify the setting and if it is off minor adjustments are made until it is just right.  Below is a photo of the final setting.  Now before starting production I will remove the jig to eliminate any possibility of the board binding during the cut.  Once the piece is cut, I will need to set the jig back in place, position my blank next to the brass screw and run the fence up to the blank until it just touches it.  In order for the ripped pieces to all be the same size the fence pressure against the blank which is against the brass screw needs to be the same.  Because there are several blanks the same width, I can set the fence once and rip a strip of off each before having to reset the fence. 

Over time from various projects I have collected a fair amount of thin stock and now seemed like a good time to use some of it.  Here is the table saw setup used to rip the ¹³/₁₆” wide blanks out of the thin stock.

After cutting what seemed like a zillion pieces but really was only about 85 including a few extras I ran them through the thickness sander to remove the saw blade cuts and get rid of any thickness variance.  A dial caliper is used to check the thickness to get it right at ¹/₈”.  Below is the finished stack of what will become the “head” mortar joints in my brick wall.

Because of the way the cherry bricks are put together in a sub-assembly I could rip the above head pieces from a roughly ¹³/₁₆” thick blank and have the grain running in the right direction.  In order for the finished chopping block to be stable and not split as a result of the expansion and contraction due to humidity changes all the grain must run the same direction.  What that means is the bed mortar joint can’t be done the same way as the head joints.  I have to glue up a 26” wide piece then cross cut it into pieces the same width as the chopping block is thick.  Just trust me on this, if it does not quite make sense now it will when the time comes start gluing all the pieces together.

In order to get what is needed there are two options.  First, I could glue up a board 26” wide by 11 ½” long by ¹³/₁₆” thick, cut that into roughly 2” wide blanks then rip the blanks into the ³/₁₆” thick pieces and finally thickness sand the 25 of them required down to the ¹/₈” thickness needed for my mortar joint.  The other option which I went with is to cut the boards 11 ½” long, rip down to ³/₁₆” thick pieces on the bandsaw, thickness sand them smooth to just a bit over ¹/₈” thick, glue them up to get the 26” wide piece, thickness sand the five 26”x 11 ½” pieces to the ¹/₈” thickness and finally crosscut them to size.  I thought this way would involve a lot less time on the bandsaw.  Anyway, here is the bandsaw setup for cutting the roughly 8’ wide by ³/₁₆” thick pieces.

The bandsaw does a pretty good job of slicing tall boards into thinner ones but the resulting surface does need help.  This is what the cut looks like right off the saw.  To smooth out and bring all the thin sawn pieces to a consistent thickness it’s back to the thickness sander.  After that I measure, mark and cut the four pieces, I need to glue together to get the 26” wide piece.  

Here are all the various parts ready to start the gluing up process.  The light-colored pieces on the far left are the maple head joints.  To the right of them the short cherry stack will be used as the starting and ending piece in the first panel glue-up round.  The next and largest stack is also cherry and will be used for the body of each panel.  On the far right is a stack of ¹/₈” thick maple pieces which will be used for the bed joints.  They get glued up and crosscut into pieces the same width as the cherry pieces in the large stack which is where I will start in the next entry.

Next up – Gluing & More Gluing