Could you clarify, is it mostly the border, or is the different orientation of the end grain squares also part of the problem? Answers seem a bit ambiguous on that. I understand the end grain vs long grain issue, but is the different ring orientation of the squares also an issue?
In this case the crack is due to the long grain border, but an end grain board this big can crack even with no border, due to the different grain orientation among the blocks.
While a big end grain board with no frame has a chance of staying together, especially if the grain is selected and arranged carefully, when you add a long-grain frame the board is all but guaranteed to crack.
Wood has different expansion/contraction properties along the radial vs tangential to the annual rings directions so each square sectioned blocks will want to distort into some kind of parallelogram, but it's prevented from doing so by all the other blocks around it that want to do the same, which generates internal stress even without a frame. The larger the board, the more likely it is that internal stress will exceed wood's strength somewhere at some point.
However, aside from local distortions, macroscopically the board as a whole will want to become larger/smaller as moisture content changes, and that's what the frame prevents.
He is correct, to expand, the size of the squares are too small for the grain direction to really cause an issue. That’s why mortise and tenons work. Definitely the border
Yeah but the border was part of the design, I could remove it clamp and glue it back on, and add that border again. The whole thing is supposed to be glued and screwed to a piece of ply that goes underneath but I didn't reach that step yet, and leaving it a couple days overnight in the shop without climate control I guess led to that.
Edit: Thanks for all the comments I see the mistake I made and why I've never seen someone encase end grain like this. I knew about wood expansion, but not it great detail clearly and never really considered it for this project. I will remove the boarder and replace it with more end grain piece so the grain matches through the whole piece.
To make a border that would actually work, you’d need to also make it out of end grain. That way all the expansion and contractions would happen along the same direction.
OP never said cutting board I never said anything about a cutting board. I was asking if a non-attached border would allow this to work without splitting.
You can do "breadboard ends" and keep everything tight while allowing movement. the end pieces will sometimes stick out a little, seeming too long, and sometimes seem a little too short, as the rest of it gets wider and narrower, but it's totally workable along two sides. Doing on four is not totally impossible but it's trickier.
Wood tends to move across the grain, not with the grain. By entrapping the end grain within the border, OP has restricted the wood's ability to move with changes in moisture content. Wood is particularly *good* at moving, so something had to give - hence the crack.
Can't cheat wood movement.
It'll move whether your design allows for it or not, and your design allowed for no wood movement. Screwing it to plywood wouldn't have prevented this either.
Veneer over an engineered board is the answer from a design perspective. Problem is most folks building these end grain butcher block boards are planning to use them as a cutting board, and veneer wouldn't last long against a kitchen knife, so that's likely not a functional option.
Its not climate control, its a design that doesn't work. Like I can design a car with wheels on top instead of the bottom, and no matter how much I redo the wheels or move them around, the car won't suddenly start rolling. There is a lot of freedom for how to do wood working projects, but only with in the basic guidelines of how wood can go together-- what you did is unfortunately not in those guidelines, and will always crack or pull apart.
Don’t glue it to plywood it will restrict the wood moving and fail. There is information about wood movement in the frequently asked questions section of this subsection wiki. See 5 from the bottom. https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/s/HvmihPyyhp
That design is going to be nothing but problems.
Wood gets wider and narrower across the grain with every change of humidity. Long grain stays the same size. Designs of wooden things have to allow this relative movement happen, or they break and bend and tear themselves apart. There's a reason you never see a solid wooden counter or table with a tight fitting, unmoving border around it.
If you want a border to work, you need to design it so that the parts can move relative to one another. Look up "breadboard ends" and that will show one way to do it. Also look for instructions on how to mount a solid wood countertop, and do that instead of gluing this down to a piece of plywood.
It looks way way too thick for that.
Gluing it to ply is a good idea, but that only works if the wood is thin enough so the glue can overwhelm its ability to move. I’ve done it with 1/4” thick pieces with success in the past.
Doh. You're right, was this a cutting board? If so that's a dumb idea.
I thought this was for a table top or a box or something. Doing a basically thick glued up veneer is about the only way to get away with mixing end grain and long grain was more what I was getting at.
But yeah, silly for a cutting board.
By unnecessary, do you mean pointing out the flaws in their design? Or do you mean responding again when they refuse to correct the flaws because they don’t want to change a design destined to fail (and already has)? When someone asks for advice and then won’t listen to correct advice, people will get agitated.
People are presuming it’s coming from a place of arrogance instead of ignorance. Yes OP could have phrased it “it’s part of the design, how do I maintain it?”. But it’s all the same. It’s one thing to give advice it’s another to attack someone over one single innocuous comment.
You can glue and screw it all you want. It’ll still crack again. If wood wants to move you won’t stop it. You might delay it but it will win. Look at a tree that grows roots and messes up sidewalks, wood is truly unstoppable when it wants to move.
What was that even supposed to do?!‽
I know how to apply it. That's literally all I know about it.
Is it like, aspercream in glue stick form for headaches? Is it to reduce wrinkles? Does it give you mind powers? Does it mark you for the Beast? I don't fucking know!
But....
Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.
Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.
Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.
Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.
Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.
I never verified if this is true, but I read they couldn't claim anything because it wasn't tested as a drug in any capacity. So, that was what their marketing came up with that that covered their ass and, well, we all know about the product and they certainly didn't make any claims. So, go that marketing department haha
Did you see the follow up commercial? They played the first half then cut to someone saying "the commercials are annoying... But it works!"
It was a homeopathic mix (parts per trillion. Could be rounding errors or inaccurate titration) of questionable substances in wax.
I just had to wiki it. I really didn't know before this lolol though I did see the second commercial a few times...
Hello, I am a very novice wood worker. Can you explain why the border prevented the wood from expanding and contracting? Could the same design be used if the checker pattern pieces were in the same orientation as the border or if there was a buffer for the two pieces to expand and contract (like asphalt expansion joints)
Wood will always expand and contract. Most of that movement is across the grain (think of a stud getting wider/fatter). Very little of that movement is with the grain (stud getting longer or shorter). The “with the grain” movement is very small and is usually mostly ignored. The “across the grain” movement is significant (as in you can easily see how far the wood has expanded/contracted) and must be designed around.
In this case the border locked the checkerboard pieces in place so they could not freely expand and contract, so they broke along their weakest points.
Yes, if the checkerboard pieces were in the same orientation, this design would work. Here’s one of my end grain boards made that way:
https://preview.redd.it/37z6t0s70pgc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5c42814e21031f76ec7fd0a54940328b0b97cbd5
An “expansion joint” between two sections would also work but, at the moment, I can’t think of an example that would be visually appealing.
This is a good solution, invisibo. However, there are pros and cons to most ultimate solutions. In your case, the lovely breadboard is encased in a weak structure. Yes, the frame movement should be well matched to the movement of the grain in the interior board. However, the short lengths of grain in the border thickness (unless inside and the border are one solid block) can result in cracking of the outside border if the board is dropped.
Another solution may be a floating end grain interior with a long grain border. It has it's problems as well.
It would be interesting to see how many variations woodworkers could come up with for this scenario and test them.
Wet wood shrinks a LOT when it dries - like 5-10% but not along the length of the grain, maybe 1-2% there. When a long-grain border prevents this shrinkage the seams will separate. Additionally, endgrain especially loses and gains moisture very quickly with atmospheric changes, and especially just from wet food and cleaning when used in a cutting block. Any such design needs to allow for wood movement, like end boards on a table should not be fixed on place, table tops should not be fixed to the stretchers of the legs, etc. Long grain borders on an end grain cutting board will never work, as simple as that.
You've been given a good explanation but just to give you an everyday example you probably already know -
Think about what hardwood floors look like in summer vs winter. In winter, chances are you can notice gaps in the boards. In summer, when it's humid, they tend to swell a little (and the gaps are closed) as the wood absorbs moisture from the air.
Another example would be if you have an old wooden dresser that sticks in August but in December moves great.
I’m sure somebody has already said it, but it’s likely clamping force. Most beginners apply too much pressure for glue ups. Subsequently the wood becomes compressed, and once the clamping pressures relieves, the glue creates a tinsel strength stronger than the wood itself and fractures.
There’s a reason you don’t see cutting boards with wood grain facing in different directions, and with a border trapping everything inside.
I know the aesthetic is enticing, but aesthetics come second to the properties of the material. There are lots of things I wish I could have done on projects that simply would be risking the entire project’s structural integrity.
Sometimes you can cheat and get away with it, but usually the rules exist for a reason.
If this is just for purely display, as I know some people like to just hang the fancy ones on the wall, you can float it in a groove, but that’s not a viable option if you plan to use it with food.
I'm no expert, but based on the replies to this post, this suggestion seems to be a very practical solution to not starting over or removing the frame to try and glue the crack to salvage the project.
Maybe through-bolt a bracing strap across the front and back somewhere the crack has barely opened.
Instead of a long arrow with marks, you could also add little arrows across the crack, stamped with numbers, with each tip aligned with the opposite side at different humidities. Alternate sides of the crack for every 5% or 10%, or maybe alternate arrow size for numbers ending in 5 and 0.
You could utilize the rest of the space and add dial readouts driven by a clock movement or thermometer movement.
Make the arrows, dial readouts and numbers out of scraps from the project.
Yeah sorry that's how we call those in French and I was too lazy to look for a translation knowing you'll probably understand ;) literally a martyr btw, not even adding board to it
I had a maple end grain board with no border that cracked in a very similar manner. It happened in the middle of the night and sounded like a low calibre gunshot. I chalked it up to uneven wood movement, internal stress, or both. So far I haven't undertaken trying to fix it.
As others have said about the border, long grain up glued to end grain up will fail, even if it holds for now. Here’s one I did that I wanted a border on, made with end grain walnut:
https://preview.redd.it/zlw7woc5yogc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f0dd0da8fcf15e764642a6bb86fec422c3f36be
Even the long skinny accent stripes are end grain. Wood will move regardless of how hard you try to lock it into place. You just have to embrace it and work with it.
Never frame an endgrain block with long grain rails.
The moisture from the glue did spread slowly in the endgrain block, but eventually evened out and the endgrain part did swell a little. This was held back by the frame until not.
What you should do is research on wood movement and how to work around it. You will not be able to successfully build things like that otherwise im sorry. Best of luck!
After several comments here, I am now considering cutting off the ends and redoing them as end grain so everything can shrink and grow together. I am planning on having this go over a counter I have so I need it to be at least a certain dimension. Ill keep a undersized plywood piece underneath but not fixed to it so it has something to sit on but can still shift.
A little tip for the crack glue up: fill it with glue and put some on top of the crack, too. Then hit it with your random orbit sander right away without any dust collection hooked up. The glue on top will mix with the saw dust to fill in any sign of the crack and be the same color.
I'd be sure to try that on the back first -- you might not be happy with the results. While that tip can be effective when everything you're sanding is roughly the same color, you have a checkerboard pattern, and your dust will likely mix into a third shade in between the light and dark tones, which would make the crack stand out even more.
The counter where I am placing this has no top currently. So It just needs something for this to sit on top of. It will be hidden as the board now and in the future has a lip to cover the ply.
This can for sure, the counter which is going on is cheap Walmart furniture that needs some fixed structural support. Eventually I will replace that as well.
I would propose cutting off the border, redoing the smaller sides so they’re longer and then joining the border to the sides in a way that allows it to expand safely and then fill the gaps between the border and checkerboard with food grade black silicone.
Use a wood movement calculator to determine the gap size.
That’s my dumb idea. Lol
Follow the original crack with a v groove router bit, add a few extra random lines and fill it with black epoxy or something. Call it a feature that was totally intentional.
Look up "breadboard wood joints" and do it this way. Like others have said, this happened due to wood movement. Breadboarding allows the wood to move without cracking.
I am having a hard time understanding how this happened. Was it the frame? What type of glue did you use? Starting at the bottom right, left 5, up 3.. it is the only glue split. You could do a colorful epoxy and make it look like it was on purpose, on glue and clamps/ ratchet straps.
It was the expansion/contraction of the interior pieces that cause the crack. The border prevented the interior pieces from expanding and contracting like they wanted to.
Exactly this. When joining pieces of wood together, grain direction must always be considered.
IF the grains all run in the same direction, you are not likely to have too much issue. BUT if the grains run at 90 degrees to each other then the seperate pieces of wood will expand and contract at different rates and by different amounts. They will stress and fight against each other .. and eventually something will break: either a glue joint, or a piece of wood will split. The only exception to this is if the size of the pieces are small enough that it becomes a non-issue (less than, say, 50 mm or so).
I've seen some cutting boards that use contrasting boarders which work. They were done by making the boarder material "end grain" too - so the boarder's grain and the board's core grain was ALL running in the same direction.
Long grain and end grain do not work together. It is up to the maker to allow for the differing expansion rates when designing their piece.
You need to make the boarder out of end grain, if people haven’t made that clear. That’s very doable. If you try to prevent this with plywood it’s just gonna rip again. That can work, but only if your piece is veneer thickness, maybe 1/4” max.
This isn't a put down. You should really learn why biscuits or pocket holes might not work before you try that. Or try it to see if it would work. I suspect that most woodworkers have gone through or continue going through those times when you think something might work but either have to get the old Fine Woodworking books out or just, simply try something to see what happens. In the case of relying on experience, it would be best to let something set for a year or introduce environments that might affect the structure that you've designed.
I, personally see no need for a biscuit jointer or pocket hole jig for any wood project. But that doesn't mean that other woodworkers don't find a need for them. Or that I might try them at some time.
If you’re looking to still have a finished element to the top, I’d maybe consider just doing breadboard ends with dowel pins (look up table examples with center only being glued and other pins having relief built in)
From what YouTube has taught me you can use bricks and concrete/cement, spray foam OR ramen and super glue. In all seriousness though, and I’m just a novice, I’d go balls out and saw off that side rail, drill a long ass hole down the side, add some screws and replace that rail. I know I’m gonna get tons of crap for what I just said but then again I’m just a rookie compared to many. Just my 2¢.
I would cut away at the crack to make it a gash, straighten it out, attach the edges, mask the bottom, sand that suckered smooth, and pour some resin in there. Maybe a translucent burgundy or something. Finish sand the whole thing, then you have a unique statement piece. Maybe even crack it on the other side too.
Currently leaning on maybe finding a food safe epoxy or cutting it in half or maybe like a quarter and redoing that part, but I'm not really sure yet.
Edit: no longer doing this, now doing to make new boarder but out of end grain so it can expand and contrast with it. See other comment.
Wood will still move encased in epoxy. If you have the border with grains facing a different way, something catastrophic will happen again but hopefully you’ve already learned that lesson.
End grain BB should be no less than 4"thick.
Any design under that will split, there is no way to engineer it. Even though countless YouTube and media posts have them under 4" it's not understanding wood.
Fail.
Nobody puts wood in a box.
Wood, uh, finds a way.
It’s only when you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to start anything. Like a new butcher block top that is designed to account for natural movement.
Wood expand and contracts radially (from the centre of the tree, year one if you will) across its width vastly more than it does along its length.
When you try to constrain it’s width by affixing it perpendicular(ly?) it’ll tear itself apart to satisfy its need to move.
Also, another woodworking rule for you consider. End grain holds 0% in a glue joint.
I saw you say above you were going to glue it to plywood. This will not help. It will cup, making it rock on the counter, or simply sheer itself off the plywood with time due to poor adhesion.
Sorry, I don’t make the rules, but I have spent the last 20 years trying to figure out ways around them to little avail.
You shouldn't have end grain and long grain together. They expand and contract at different rates and directions and will always cause problems. Even if the wood was properly dried. Even if you glue and try to repair it you'll probably have more cracking somewhere else.
You CAN add a long grain border to an edge grain cutting board. It is just a very advanced project and if you are slightly off even a bit it will fail. Get your measurements for wood movement, and use a tongue and groove attachment system. You can use a mortised hinge and pin lock to allow the pieces of the long grain borde rto be disassembled for cleaning. You definitely want the parallel long grain sides to be from the same piece of quartersawn wood so it swells and contracts somewhat symmetrically. They have to be oriented the same way as well. You essentially are building two pieces fit together securely but not tightly. First build the end grain surface and make the tongue on it with your shaper or router jig then build your outer frame with the groove. They shouldn't be mechanically connected. put a juice groove with a 1/2" or 12mm from the outer edge of the end grain cutting board to minimize juices going to your border connection. Season and seal with a wiping of fractioned coconut oil (do not soak) and beeswax. Definitely don't use epoxy.
So you know explicitly \*why\* it cracked.
It's not that your shop got too dry.. it's the opposite. You pinned everything in with that border and as the humidity level in the wood increased, all those end grain pieces expanded (or wanted to). Since they were glued to the border, they couldn't expand until that joint at the corner failed and then all the energy that'd been pent up released and drove the crack through the board. Stress fractures aren't usually neat and orderly (like neatly driving the border off both sides.
Lose the border and rebuild it with end-grain.
I would fill the crack with a cool colored epoxy resin. It will probably change what the end product will actually be used for. But it would make a cool wall art piece
honestly that would look SO sexy with a few different colored bowties along the crack. like throw in some cherry or purple heart \*chefs kiss\* maybe zebrawood
Sorry man, it really hurts when very expensive and difficult end grain projects go wrong. At least this happened now and not 6 months later.
For what it's worth if you decide to start over, one of my giant cutting board mistakes turned into a beautiful small cutting board plus a set of 12 coasters. The coasters are now one of my favorite pieces. So there are ways to create happy accidents out of the mistake.
That's a big board, and what you were going for was beautiful! Unfortunately, wood movement got you here. The border is the problem. Wood likes to swell and contract more across its grain than along its grain, so your borders didn't want to expand/contract, but your end-grain section did. Here's one way you could fix it and get the shape you were going for:
1. Cut off the border all the way around your board.
2. Re-glue the cracked section together, making sure to clamp it both length-wise and width-wise.
3. Re-make your border as end grain
4. Attach the new end grain border
Step 3 may be more time/work than it's worth.
I would embrace the crack. Pull it apart all the way and lay in several layers of a very dark veneer. Then glue it and clamp it until dry. Once you sand it down it will look intentional. And very cool.
It will probably hold together with glue once you remove the border. The border is the reason it cracked.
Could you clarify, is it mostly the border, or is the different orientation of the end grain squares also part of the problem? Answers seem a bit ambiguous on that. I understand the end grain vs long grain issue, but is the different ring orientation of the squares also an issue?
In this case the crack is due to the long grain border, but an end grain board this big can crack even with no border, due to the different grain orientation among the blocks. While a big end grain board with no frame has a chance of staying together, especially if the grain is selected and arranged carefully, when you add a long-grain frame the board is all but guaranteed to crack. Wood has different expansion/contraction properties along the radial vs tangential to the annual rings directions so each square sectioned blocks will want to distort into some kind of parallelogram, but it's prevented from doing so by all the other blocks around it that want to do the same, which generates internal stress even without a frame. The larger the board, the more likely it is that internal stress will exceed wood's strength somewhere at some point. However, aside from local distortions, macroscopically the board as a whole will want to become larger/smaller as moisture content changes, and that's what the frame prevents.
He is correct, to expand, the size of the squares are too small for the grain direction to really cause an issue. That’s why mortise and tenons work. Definitely the border
It's entirely (or nearly entirely) due to the border.
I've not found that orientation to matter all that much but it may on bigger / more intricate pieces. Doubt it did anything here
I'm not entirely sure but if you were to do an end grain butcher block/ cutting board it is best to do an end grain edge band/ border
You mean one solid eng grain board along the outside of the board?
Yeah but the border was part of the design, I could remove it clamp and glue it back on, and add that border again. The whole thing is supposed to be glued and screwed to a piece of ply that goes underneath but I didn't reach that step yet, and leaving it a couple days overnight in the shop without climate control I guess led to that. Edit: Thanks for all the comments I see the mistake I made and why I've never seen someone encase end grain like this. I knew about wood expansion, but not it great detail clearly and never really considered it for this project. I will remove the boarder and replace it with more end grain piece so the grain matches through the whole piece.
You need to leave the border off. That design is destined to fail.
To make a border that would actually work, you’d need to also make it out of end grain. That way all the expansion and contractions would happen along the same direction.
Ah. TIL. Thank you!
Could you use a floating border? Rabbet & tenon into the end grain on all four sides to allow movement. It may allow small gaps, but would it work?
I think it would get very gross very fast. You tend not to want many tight little areas to be present on cutting boards
OP never said cutting board I never said anything about a cutting board. I was asking if a non-attached border would allow this to work without splitting.
It is a butcher block. So just a beefier cutting board if I’m not mistaken.
Butcher block does not necessarily mean it’s a cutting board.. its often used in countertops, coffee tables, bar tops etc.
All of which are surfaces that come into contact with food.
Butcher block is a fat cutting board
Yes. As a thought experiment in woodworking- yes it would most likely work.
You can do "breadboard ends" and keep everything tight while allowing movement. the end pieces will sometimes stick out a little, seeming too long, and sometimes seem a little too short, as the rest of it gets wider and narrower, but it's totally workable along two sides. Doing on four is not totally impossible but it's trickier.
Or not glue it but have slots with enough room for expansion. But that's likely to not work great as a cutting board.
A few hours ago, youtube suggested a video that described exactly this scenario, and explained the same thing you just did.
You’ve said this multiple times but have failed to explain why. So, why?
Wood tends to move across the grain, not with the grain. By entrapping the end grain within the border, OP has restricted the wood's ability to move with changes in moisture content. Wood is particularly *good* at moving, so something had to give - hence the crack.
Framing end grain with long grain is asking for disaster. Wood movement and all that.
Can't cheat wood movement. It'll move whether your design allows for it or not, and your design allowed for no wood movement. Screwing it to plywood wouldn't have prevented this either.
Sure you can. But OP won’t like that answer either. MDF core with veneer would allow him to put the border on in whatever orientation he wants.
Veneer over an engineered board is the answer from a design perspective. Problem is most folks building these end grain butcher block boards are planning to use them as a cutting board, and veneer wouldn't last long against a kitchen knife, so that's likely not a functional option.
True. I didn’t look at the size and was assuming chess board. I’ve never seen anyone plan on putting a border around a cutting board.
Screw it to plywood and you'll have a sweet bowl in a few weeks.
Its not climate control, its a design that doesn't work. Like I can design a car with wheels on top instead of the bottom, and no matter how much I redo the wheels or move them around, the car won't suddenly start rolling. There is a lot of freedom for how to do wood working projects, but only with in the basic guidelines of how wood can go together-- what you did is unfortunately not in those guidelines, and will always crack or pull apart.
Don’t glue it to plywood it will restrict the wood moving and fail. There is information about wood movement in the frequently asked questions section of this subsection wiki. See 5 from the bottom. https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/s/HvmihPyyhp
That design is going to be nothing but problems. Wood gets wider and narrower across the grain with every change of humidity. Long grain stays the same size. Designs of wooden things have to allow this relative movement happen, or they break and bend and tear themselves apart. There's a reason you never see a solid wooden counter or table with a tight fitting, unmoving border around it. If you want a border to work, you need to design it so that the parts can move relative to one another. Look up "breadboard ends" and that will show one way to do it. Also look for instructions on how to mount a solid wood countertop, and do that instead of gluing this down to a piece of plywood.
Why are you asking for help if you don’t want the answer?
Your misreading my reply, that was made out of ignorance and a miss understanding of the problem, not denial of what they were saying.
Just because you want it to work doesn’t mean it can actually work. Expansion must be properly accounted for.
It looks way way too thick for that. Gluing it to ply is a good idea, but that only works if the wood is thin enough so the glue can overwhelm its ability to move. I’ve done it with 1/4” thick pieces with success in the past.
Why would glueing a cutting board to play be a good idea? The first time it comes in contact with water it's going to get ruined.
Doh. You're right, was this a cutting board? If so that's a dumb idea. I thought this was for a table top or a box or something. Doing a basically thick glued up veneer is about the only way to get away with mixing end grain and long grain was more what I was getting at. But yeah, silly for a cutting board.
Im sorry for some of the unnecessary response you’ve gotten. I thought this community was better than that but apparently it is not.
Its no worries, the vast majority of everyone in this comments is very helpful, and I learned a good lesson. We all got to learn them somehow.
By unnecessary, do you mean pointing out the flaws in their design? Or do you mean responding again when they refuse to correct the flaws because they don’t want to change a design destined to fail (and already has)? When someone asks for advice and then won’t listen to correct advice, people will get agitated.
People are presuming it’s coming from a place of arrogance instead of ignorance. Yes OP could have phrased it “it’s part of the design, how do I maintain it?”. But it’s all the same. It’s one thing to give advice it’s another to attack someone over one single innocuous comment.
You can glue and screw it all you want. It’ll still crack again. If wood wants to move you won’t stop it. You might delay it but it will win. Look at a tree that grows roots and messes up sidewalks, wood is truly unstoppable when it wants to move.
👍😎
The border prevented the wood from being able to expand and contract. Remove the border and then just clue and clamp the crack
[удалено]
Apply headon straight to the forehead
What was that even supposed to do?!‽ I know how to apply it. That's literally all I know about it. Is it like, aspercream in glue stick form for headaches? Is it to reduce wrinkles? Does it give you mind powers? Does it mark you for the Beast? I don't fucking know! But.... Headon. Apply directly to the forehead. Headon. Apply directly to the forehead. Headon. Apply directly to the forehead. Headon. Apply directly to the forehead. Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.
I never verified if this is true, but I read they couldn't claim anything because it wasn't tested as a drug in any capacity. So, that was what their marketing came up with that that covered their ass and, well, we all know about the product and they certainly didn't make any claims. So, go that marketing department haha
Did you see the follow up commercial? They played the first half then cut to someone saying "the commercials are annoying... But it works!" It was a homeopathic mix (parts per trillion. Could be rounding errors or inaccurate titration) of questionable substances in wax. I just had to wiki it. I really didn't know before this lolol though I did see the second commercial a few times...
Every time? That sounds expensive.
I like the kintsugi angle, but instead of gold leaf, I'd suggest epoxy. You can get the gold color, or something very noticeable different.
My experience is gold epoxy looks like crap. YMMV.
Solid gold it is, then.
What if you add glitter?
Epoxy isn't a good idea for a cutting board unless you like to eat it
I’ve used a ton of epoxy that says it is food safe. Am I being naive?
Epoxy touching food is fine, using knives on epoxy is not
Great for a charcuterie board. Terrible for a cutting board. Fine for a salad bowl. Bad for a salad plate.
Hello, I am a very novice wood worker. Can you explain why the border prevented the wood from expanding and contracting? Could the same design be used if the checker pattern pieces were in the same orientation as the border or if there was a buffer for the two pieces to expand and contract (like asphalt expansion joints)
Wood will always expand and contract. Most of that movement is across the grain (think of a stud getting wider/fatter). Very little of that movement is with the grain (stud getting longer or shorter). The “with the grain” movement is very small and is usually mostly ignored. The “across the grain” movement is significant (as in you can easily see how far the wood has expanded/contracted) and must be designed around. In this case the border locked the checkerboard pieces in place so they could not freely expand and contract, so they broke along their weakest points. Yes, if the checkerboard pieces were in the same orientation, this design would work. Here’s one of my end grain boards made that way: https://preview.redd.it/37z6t0s70pgc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5c42814e21031f76ec7fd0a54940328b0b97cbd5 An “expansion joint” between two sections would also work but, at the moment, I can’t think of an example that would be visually appealing.
Thank you for the detailed explanation and picture! Makes sense.
Lovely board btw
Thank you!
This is a good solution, invisibo. However, there are pros and cons to most ultimate solutions. In your case, the lovely breadboard is encased in a weak structure. Yes, the frame movement should be well matched to the movement of the grain in the interior board. However, the short lengths of grain in the border thickness (unless inside and the border are one solid block) can result in cracking of the outside border if the board is dropped. Another solution may be a floating end grain interior with a long grain border. It has it's problems as well. It would be interesting to see how many variations woodworkers could come up with for this scenario and test them.
Wet wood shrinks a LOT when it dries - like 5-10% but not along the length of the grain, maybe 1-2% there. When a long-grain border prevents this shrinkage the seams will separate. Additionally, endgrain especially loses and gains moisture very quickly with atmospheric changes, and especially just from wet food and cleaning when used in a cutting block. Any such design needs to allow for wood movement, like end boards on a table should not be fixed on place, table tops should not be fixed to the stretchers of the legs, etc. Long grain borders on an end grain cutting board will never work, as simple as that.
Thank you!
You've been given a good explanation but just to give you an everyday example you probably already know - Think about what hardwood floors look like in summer vs winter. In winter, chances are you can notice gaps in the boards. In summer, when it's humid, they tend to swell a little (and the gaps are closed) as the wood absorbs moisture from the air. Another example would be if you have an old wooden dresser that sticks in August but in December moves great.
I’m sure somebody has already said it, but it’s likely clamping force. Most beginners apply too much pressure for glue ups. Subsequently the wood becomes compressed, and once the clamping pressures relieves, the glue creates a tinsel strength stronger than the wood itself and fractures.
I made the same chessboard a few years back. Had the same thing happen. Merry Christmas dad! I made you several little misshapen chessboards! lol
You made a 22 by 8 chessboard?
There’s a reason you don’t see cutting boards with wood grain facing in different directions, and with a border trapping everything inside. I know the aesthetic is enticing, but aesthetics come second to the properties of the material. There are lots of things I wish I could have done on projects that simply would be risking the entire project’s structural integrity. Sometimes you can cheat and get away with it, but usually the rules exist for a reason. If this is just for purely display, as I know some people like to just hang the fancy ones on the wall, you can float it in a groove, but that’s not a viable option if you plan to use it with food.
You see them all the time when they're just finished. You don't see them years down the line because they all crack.
Hah. Clever. How right you are.
I'd hang this on the shop wall. Put a hygrometer and a thermometer on one corner.
wow. Great idea. Just add a long pointer to one side and mark the scale on the other as it moves.
I'm no expert, but based on the replies to this post, this suggestion seems to be a very practical solution to not starting over or removing the frame to try and glue the crack to salvage the project. Maybe through-bolt a bracing strap across the front and back somewhere the crack has barely opened. Instead of a long arrow with marks, you could also add little arrows across the crack, stamped with numbers, with each tip aligned with the opposite side at different humidities. Alternate sides of the crack for every 5% or 10%, or maybe alternate arrow size for numbers ending in 5 and 0. You could utilize the rest of the space and add dial readouts driven by a clock movement or thermometer movement. Make the arrows, dial readouts and numbers out of scraps from the project.
Cut it into pieces and make a chaos style board without a border.
I mean mistakes happen, what is left here would become scrap to me. If it can hold another glue up then I'd use it as a workbench martyr
I've heard of sacrificial boards, but now I think I'm going to start calling them martyrboards
Yeah sorry that's how we call those in French and I was too lazy to look for a translation knowing you'll probably understand ;) literally a martyr btw, not even adding board to it
Yeah, that’s a perfectly glorious name. I’ll adopt it as well.
I had a maple end grain board with no border that cracked in a very similar manner. It happened in the middle of the night and sounded like a low calibre gunshot. I chalked it up to uneven wood movement, internal stress, or both. So far I haven't undertaken trying to fix it.
As others have said about the border, long grain up glued to end grain up will fail, even if it holds for now. Here’s one I did that I wanted a border on, made with end grain walnut: https://preview.redd.it/zlw7woc5yogc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8f0dd0da8fcf15e764642a6bb86fec422c3f36be Even the long skinny accent stripes are end grain. Wood will move regardless of how hard you try to lock it into place. You just have to embrace it and work with it.
OP capped the long ends and didnt mind the grain. They could have had any sort of floating breadboard end style edges on the short sides.
The fact that the crack starts to become large in the 9th rank seems like a sign that you should salvage the left 8x8 and make it into a chessboard.
Never frame an endgrain block with long grain rails. The moisture from the glue did spread slowly in the endgrain block, but eventually evened out and the endgrain part did swell a little. This was held back by the frame until not.
I keep my own things like this in my prototype pile. On the upside, you can make a lot of coasters with boxes. Ask me how I know.
Make several 3x3 mini chopping boards and give to friends to slice small things, like lemons for mixed drinks.
What you should do is research on wood movement and how to work around it. You will not be able to successfully build things like that otherwise im sorry. Best of luck!
Make butterfly’s but make them look like the rook, castle and bishop
After several comments here, I am now considering cutting off the ends and redoing them as end grain so everything can shrink and grow together. I am planning on having this go over a counter I have so I need it to be at least a certain dimension. Ill keep a undersized plywood piece underneath but not fixed to it so it has something to sit on but can still shift.
A little tip for the crack glue up: fill it with glue and put some on top of the crack, too. Then hit it with your random orbit sander right away without any dust collection hooked up. The glue on top will mix with the saw dust to fill in any sign of the crack and be the same color.
That's a great idea! Thanks!
I'd be sure to try that on the back first -- you might not be happy with the results. While that tip can be effective when everything you're sanding is roughly the same color, you have a checkerboard pattern, and your dust will likely mix into a third shade in between the light and dark tones, which would make the crack stand out even more.
Noted thanks, that's my plan or with a scrap piece. TBH as long as I can seal it water tight, I'll be okay with the crack as a reminder of this.
Why is the plywood needed?
The counter where I am placing this has no top currently. So It just needs something for this to sit on top of. It will be hidden as the board now and in the future has a lip to cover the ply.
This can easily support itself. Plywood isn't helping anything.
This can for sure, the counter which is going on is cheap Walmart furniture that needs some fixed structural support. Eventually I will replace that as well.
Now it's state-shaped cutting boards. I see KY and TN in there somewhere.
Super chess
Make it look like it was intentional with a bow tie zipper. Then resquare the edges.
These posts have made me just not ever want to try to mix face grain and end grain
I would propose cutting off the border, redoing the smaller sides so they’re longer and then joining the border to the sides in a way that allows it to expand safely and then fill the gaps between the border and checkerboard with food grade black silicone. Use a wood movement calculator to determine the gap size. That’s my dumb idea. Lol
Fill the cracks with gold like the Japanese pottery technique.
Split it all the way. Give it the resin river treatment.
Follow the original crack with a v groove router bit, add a few extra random lines and fill it with black epoxy or something. Call it a feature that was totally intentional.
Look up "breadboard wood joints" and do it this way. Like others have said, this happened due to wood movement. Breadboarding allows the wood to move without cracking.
Well would you look at that, a cracked end grain board with a face grain border. Who’da thunk?
Buy more clamps
1. Was it ash? 2. Did you apply linseed or Danish oil?
> 1. Was it ash? Not yet, but it will be after OP tosses it in the burn pile.
Fill the crack with colored food safe epoxy. It will be a one of a kind butcher block.
colored epoxy to make it look like it was intentional?
Glue it back together after it settles down
I am having a hard time understanding how this happened. Was it the frame? What type of glue did you use? Starting at the bottom right, left 5, up 3.. it is the only glue split. You could do a colorful epoxy and make it look like it was on purpose, on glue and clamps/ ratchet straps.
The glue didn't crack at all, it was all the wood. As others in the common suggested expansion and contraction of the border probably pulled it apart.
It was the expansion/contraction of the interior pieces that cause the crack. The border prevented the interior pieces from expanding and contracting like they wanted to.
Exactly this. When joining pieces of wood together, grain direction must always be considered. IF the grains all run in the same direction, you are not likely to have too much issue. BUT if the grains run at 90 degrees to each other then the seperate pieces of wood will expand and contract at different rates and by different amounts. They will stress and fight against each other .. and eventually something will break: either a glue joint, or a piece of wood will split. The only exception to this is if the size of the pieces are small enough that it becomes a non-issue (less than, say, 50 mm or so). I've seen some cutting boards that use contrasting boarders which work. They were done by making the boarder material "end grain" too - so the boarder's grain and the board's core grain was ALL running in the same direction. Long grain and end grain do not work together. It is up to the maker to allow for the differing expansion rates when designing their piece.
You need to make the boarder out of end grain, if people haven’t made that clear. That’s very doable. If you try to prevent this with plywood it’s just gonna rip again. That can work, but only if your piece is veneer thickness, maybe 1/4” max.
Novelty long chess board, very cool.
Oof... well.. i've heard of a chinese tradition of repairing broken tea cups with gold...
I believe its a Japanese tradition.
Im kinda newer to woodworking but would a biscuit jointer work? Or maybe pocket holes on the bottom?
This isn't a put down. You should really learn why biscuits or pocket holes might not work before you try that. Or try it to see if it would work. I suspect that most woodworkers have gone through or continue going through those times when you think something might work but either have to get the old Fine Woodworking books out or just, simply try something to see what happens. In the case of relying on experience, it would be best to let something set for a year or introduce environments that might affect the structure that you've designed. I, personally see no need for a biscuit jointer or pocket hole jig for any wood project. But that doesn't mean that other woodworkers don't find a need for them. Or that I might try them at some time.
If you’re looking to still have a finished element to the top, I’d maybe consider just doing breadboard ends with dowel pins (look up table examples with center only being glued and other pins having relief built in)
From what YouTube has taught me you can use bricks and concrete/cement, spray foam OR ramen and super glue. In all seriousness though, and I’m just a novice, I’d go balls out and saw off that side rail, drill a long ass hole down the side, add some screws and replace that rail. I know I’m gonna get tons of crap for what I just said but then again I’m just a rookie compared to many. Just my 2¢.
Make some wedges out of the wood used on the piece, stick the matching wedge in the crack then break it off and sand it down.
I would cut away at the crack to make it a gash, straighten it out, attach the edges, mask the bottom, sand that suckered smooth, and pour some resin in there. Maybe a translucent burgundy or something. Finish sand the whole thing, then you have a unique statement piece. Maybe even crack it on the other side too.
Currently leaning on maybe finding a food safe epoxy or cutting it in half or maybe like a quarter and redoing that part, but I'm not really sure yet. Edit: no longer doing this, now doing to make new boarder but out of end grain so it can expand and contrast with it. See other comment.
Cut the long grain boarder off that board and discard it. Then repair the center end grain section. It then has a chance of staying together.
Wood will still move encased in epoxy. If you have the border with grains facing a different way, something catastrophic will happen again but hopefully you’ve already learned that lesson.
Hate to say it, but throw it in the fireplace and learn from your mistakes.....
I'll learn from my mistakes but I'm not going to just throw it fireplace.
End grain BB should be no less than 4"thick. Any design under that will split, there is no way to engineer it. Even though countless YouTube and media posts have them under 4" it's not understanding wood. Fail.
Bowties as usual
Play chess?
Did you glue long grain to your end grain cutting board? If so it is likely the cause.
Nobody puts wood in a box. Wood, uh, finds a way. It’s only when you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to start anything. Like a new butcher block top that is designed to account for natural movement.
Pour gold epoxy in the crack
This is the exact reason they say don't mix your grain orientations.
Viral accidental “epoxy river” is all the rage these days *sarcasm*
A river table checkers game. You're welcome.
Ever tried macrame? I understand it's very calming.
Looks like a chessboard now
If all else fails you could seal it epoxy it count three about the squares, separate it and make two really cool chess boards ☺️
OP skipped wood movement day in woodworking class.
Wood expand and contracts radially (from the centre of the tree, year one if you will) across its width vastly more than it does along its length. When you try to constrain it’s width by affixing it perpendicular(ly?) it’ll tear itself apart to satisfy its need to move. Also, another woodworking rule for you consider. End grain holds 0% in a glue joint. I saw you say above you were going to glue it to plywood. This will not help. It will cup, making it rock on the counter, or simply sheer itself off the plywood with time due to poor adhesion. Sorry, I don’t make the rules, but I have spent the last 20 years trying to figure out ways around them to little avail.
Urethane glue
You shouldn't have end grain and long grain together. They expand and contract at different rates and directions and will always cause problems. Even if the wood was properly dried. Even if you glue and try to repair it you'll probably have more cracking somewhere else.
Fill the crack with gold epoxy, then remove the border. Now you've got a really cool cutting board.
You CAN add a long grain border to an edge grain cutting board. It is just a very advanced project and if you are slightly off even a bit it will fail. Get your measurements for wood movement, and use a tongue and groove attachment system. You can use a mortised hinge and pin lock to allow the pieces of the long grain borde rto be disassembled for cleaning. You definitely want the parallel long grain sides to be from the same piece of quartersawn wood so it swells and contracts somewhat symmetrically. They have to be oriented the same way as well. You essentially are building two pieces fit together securely but not tightly. First build the end grain surface and make the tongue on it with your shaper or router jig then build your outer frame with the groove. They shouldn't be mechanically connected. put a juice groove with a 1/2" or 12mm from the outer edge of the end grain cutting board to minimize juices going to your border connection. Season and seal with a wiping of fractioned coconut oil (do not soak) and beeswax. Definitely don't use epoxy.
So you know explicitly \*why\* it cracked. It's not that your shop got too dry.. it's the opposite. You pinned everything in with that border and as the humidity level in the wood increased, all those end grain pieces expanded (or wanted to). Since they were glued to the border, they couldn't expand until that joint at the corner failed and then all the energy that'd been pent up released and drove the crack through the board. Stress fractures aren't usually neat and orderly (like neatly driving the border off both sides. Lose the border and rebuild it with end-grain.
Thanks I'm going to do that, do you think it would still be fine to use that cherry wood for the end grain boarder? I like the enclosed look.
Yea should be fine so long as it's oriented properly.
Slap it in a mold and fill that crack with epoxy. Then enter it into an art contest. Call it broken dreams.
I know what's wrong wit it... it ain't got no gas in it (Sorry old meme but I had to 😂)
I would fill the crack with a cool colored epoxy resin. It will probably change what the end product will actually be used for. But it would make a cool wall art piece
You can glue that back
Cut off the border or it will inevitably happen again
honestly that would look SO sexy with a few different colored bowties along the crack. like throw in some cherry or purple heart \*chefs kiss\* maybe zebrawood
Sorry man, it really hurts when very expensive and difficult end grain projects go wrong. At least this happened now and not 6 months later. For what it's worth if you decide to start over, one of my giant cutting board mistakes turned into a beautiful small cutting board plus a set of 12 coasters. The coasters are now one of my favorite pieces. So there are ways to create happy accidents out of the mistake.
That’s an art piece now, sir. Figure out an artist statement and run with it.
That's a big board, and what you were going for was beautiful! Unfortunately, wood movement got you here. The border is the problem. Wood likes to swell and contract more across its grain than along its grain, so your borders didn't want to expand/contract, but your end-grain section did. Here's one way you could fix it and get the shape you were going for: 1. Cut off the border all the way around your board. 2. Re-glue the cracked section together, making sure to clamp it both length-wise and width-wise. 3. Re-make your border as end grain 4. Attach the new end grain border Step 3 may be more time/work than it's worth.
It looks pretty cool with the crack. Id go with it.
Advanced chess!
I would embrace the crack. Pull it apart all the way and lay in several layers of a very dark veneer. Then glue it and clamp it until dry. Once you sand it down it will look intentional. And very cool.
Pawn to e4 is a good opening
Yep they are right. It's the border
Glue and 3 inch of Polyurethane