Breadboard Assembly -- Almost Ready for the Knife!

     After all of the painting and carpentry work I've been doing on the kitchen remodel it's been a real pleasure to work wood in the shop.  Here's the final results of that ready for assembly:

Proper "Breadboard" End Construction

     Go back to the discussion of why the breadboard end is what it is and does what it does and this will now make sense.  The Maple board will expand/contract across the width.  The end which is now painted white, caps it off and conceals the relatively unattractive end grain.  You'll notice that the holes have been elongated.  The only glue to assemble this is applied to the middle of the joint, they are then glued together and the pins are glued in place.  Because the holes are elongated the Maple can expand/contract in the groove without cracking, the elongated holes allow that to happen.  My finish of choice for anything that comes into contact with food is plain old Mineral Oil.  Cheap, safe to ingest, and won't go rancid like a vegetable oil would in the wood.  Applied it with some 320 grit wet/dry sandpaper followed with another application with a Scotch Brite, white colored pad.  For maintenance that's all you ever need to do.
     As I was working on this I remembered that when I first began teaching I became good friends with a math teacher on staff.  He was getting married so I decided it would be neat to make them a Maple salad bowl on the lathe at the school shop.  I finished it with Mineral Oil, engraved their names and date along with some wedding bells on the bottom and proudly presented it for their wedding present.  Several weeks later, he mentioned to me that the finish had gotten kind of dull after putting it in the dishwasher!!  Once he understood why wood, glue, hi-temperature water and heat drying wasn't the best for wood we refinished it and things were okay.  I wonder if they still have that bowl, it was only 1978  or so!
     Anyway, got off subject so back to the breadboard.  I really enjoyed the opportunity to do some hand tool work on this piece.  First off, the end piece needed to be shaped and sculpted.  Could have used a router bit to do this but this is a safer, quieter, and more enjoyable method.  First off, draw in the boundary lines for the shape:

Finger Guided Boundry

     Great opportunity to use spokeshaves to form that edge by carefully working to those lines:

 
     The spokeshave I'm using in the pictures has a radiused sole so it can get into inside curves.  The one on the bench is one made from a kit.  With these tools it's very easy to form edges, because you work by hand taking thin shavings it's easy to work with the grain of the wood and avoid any tear out.  Routers, on the other hand, go quickly but it the grain direction changes can be prone to ripping the edge of your board.
     Well, the ovens came yesterday so now it's time to open up the cabinet to make it fit.  Oh yeah, I will be using a router and edge guide to accomplish that!

Why it's called a Bread Board End

     Everybody knows what a breadboard is and many of you have probably heard of the bread board end but let me take this blog as a way to explain it.  The bread board that came with our house was simply a piece of Baltic Birch plywood with an Oak cleat nailed on to match the cabinets -- badda boom badda bing, slap it together and you're done!  Well, let's go to the traditional route.
     This bread board is made up of three pieces of hard Maple.  To conceal the unattractive end grain, another piece is applied to the end of the board.  Since this piece is placed against the end of the others you have to take the wood movement into consideration.  The main boards have the grain running perpendicular to that front piece which can be a problem.  It needs to have room to expand or contract depending on the atmospheric conditions.  That's accomplished by cutting a tongue on the end of the board and a groove in the center of the piece placed on the end, here's the end:

Piece of the End of Breadboard

    I used a small plunge router with a 1/4" straight bit to cut this groove.  Notice the deeper sections towards the ends?  This is where the full length tongues will go.  Don't want the tongues to be too wide either.  I plan on using a knob on this board as well, that's what the hole in the center is for.

Breadboard & Breadboard End

     Here's what you have going on.  A 1/2" rabbeting bit was used with a router to create the tongue on the end of the board.  It's full length for about 1/8 in depth and then the tongues are 1/2" deep.  I've darkened in the areas that will need to be cut away.  Remember my power tool for grunt work and hand tools to refine it philosophy?  I'll use a bandsaw to waste away most of this, then:

Chisel to Square Corners

           And .....

Rabbet Plane to Fine Tune the Tongue

     Now, all of this may seem like a lot of effort and work just to make a board that will be cut up when slicing bread, tomatoes, chicken, etc. but it's these little touches that separates mass produced, make a quick buck product from one made to the highest standard.  Like Diane says, it's going to be hard to take a knife to this thing but it must be done!  Kind of like buying a new pick up and getting that first scratch in the bed when you're hauling rocks -- it's inevitable.
     Here's a little rant, as I thought about how that piece of Birch ply with the Oak cleat was serviceable for all these years I too questioned why go to all of this trouble.  It's all about the process involved and using your mind to solve the issues.  It's sad to me that people who do work in the wood industry have probably never been exposed to the issues involved to make this "simple" breadboard.  Look at this:

What it Took

 
     The end of the breadboard is pretty complex.  The pencil and ruler were needed to locate the joint after the brain had figured out how to do it.  The chisels were needed to refine it and cut that little recess on the tongue for the screw.  The small carving chisel (center) rounded out the recess for the screw head to fit in to and the rabbet plane brought the tongue to thickness so that it fit neatly into the groove.  The small router plane was needed for the thin part of the tongue where the rabbet plane was difficult to balance.
     Know what though?  One person could have programmed a CNC machine to do all of those processes and a minimum wage flunky could have fastened the board in place on that machine!  Each board would be spit out faster than I could accomplish the lay out!
     Progress and technology is a good thing but I've always said: "it can suck your brains out!"  Hopefully there are enough folks like me around that want to share this craft and keep it going.  Next will be shaping of the front piece and finishing.

Breadboard: Hand Planing Sequence Part 2

     In the last blog I talked about how to go about jointing the edges to prepare for gluing up a wide board.  Now that's done it's time to surface it and bring it to our thickness.  Here's your goal:

Super Thin Shaving

     If you're like me and prefer the look and feel of a hand planed surface this is what you're after.  In the first part of this blog I talked about jointing the edges and showed a rather thick, even thickness, shaving.  When you hand plane a surface it's best to use a slightly cambered blade which will give you a shaving that's thicker in the middle and tapers to nothing at the sides.  Your surface will be ever so slightly and barely scalloped but it's hardly noticed by the human eye.  So saying that, it is a difference some folks look for!  But hey, this is going to be a cutting board so why bother.  Just me I guess!
     There is a well known, hand tool woodworker by the name of Christopher Schwartz.  He advocates many traditional woodworking processes and has his distinct matter of working and exactly what tools you need to accomplish them.  Him and I differ in that I strive to do the most I can with a minimum of tools; i.e. ca$h outlay, I am Dutch after all!
     I'd like to point out a few things.  First off, hardwoods classified as 4/4 are usually 25/32" to 13/16" thick so you'll need to make them a uniform thickness.  The slot for the breadboard is 3/4" so I needed to bring this down to 11/16" or so.  Since the piece was laminated and is now 16" wide, my 15" planer won't handle it.  I could have surfaced each piece down before I laminated them but no matter what, they'll still need to be smoothed and surfaced.
     Here's my sequence, first of all I used a jointer plane (# 7) for the initial smoothing:

Jointer Plane, note Arrows Showing Grain Direction

     This should be checked with a straight edge.  You can also lay the board on a smooth, square machine surface and see if it rocks.  The goal now is to make the show face for lack of a better word.  Thickness will come later.
     Once the show face is relatively smooth the next step is to use a Jack Plane with a cambered blade to smooth the entire surface:

Initial Work with Jack Plane

     The blade is cambered so the edges don't dig in and create grooves.  Do you see  the different appearance of the wood as it is cut and planed smooth?  A good technique is to cover the wood with pencil marks too, theory being that once all of those are gone you've completely planed the surface.  Now it's time to refine it:

Bronze Smoother Plane

     Hopefully you can see the different sheen on the wood as you take the thin shavings like the one shown at the beginning of this post.  Your goal at this time is to make this surface almost perfect.  I say almost because you still have some work to do on the opposite side and may make some dings on this surface.  So, what do we need to do?

     If you had that big planer you'd just slip it in there, however; most of us don't have the luxury of one of those.  Before power planers came about there was a hand plane referred to as a Scrub Plane.  You can search my blogs because I went through the construction of this tool at the beginning of the year.  It's been quite well received and I've had many web contacts asking for details on how to build one.  Quite flattering really and one man has already made his version of this plane in a class I taught and there are several others out there in the internet world I've communicated with to help them build their own versions.  In any case, this blade has a radiused blade and is designed to remove wood in a hurry!  It works best when skewed across the surface of the board.  That gets you these curlicue shavings, for some reason on this Maple, scrubbing with the grain actually clogged the throat and it's huge!

Nice, Curlicue Shavings 

     It doesn't take long ( and cancels your trip to the gym) to work that board down to your required thickness.  I would recommend doing this only on the bottom of your board because you may go a bit deep with the scrub plane, deeper than your desired thickness.  This means there will be a depression, slight but still noticeable if it were to show like a table top.

Nice Pile of Shavings, Note the Texture of the Cut

     Now you do the same process, Jointer plane to smooth things initially, Jack plane (cambered blade) to refine even more, and then a Smooth plane to complete the job. Here's my collection of planes I use to accomplish this task.  You can do without the specialized Smooth plane by getting a spare blade for your Jack plane and putting a camber on it.  I did that for years and it works just fine.  I still use the Jack with a straight blade for general purpose work and then swap it for the cambered one to pre-finish the surface before switching over to the Smooth plane.

     It's like I stated earlier, my goal is to do the most work possible with the fewest number of tools.  I will admit though that when I get paid for a commission and there is a special tool I've had my eye on I may justify buying it but -- I'm Dutch and that wallet can be pretty hard to open at times!

Breadboard: Hand Planing Sequence

     If you've been following the Kitchen Redo you've no doubt heard me lament about the breadboard.  It didn't look quite as pathetic when it was in the original cabinets but now that they've gotten their Re-Do the poor thing sticks out like a very sore thumb!  Feels good to get into my preferred woodworking methods, using hand tools and hardwoods.
     To begin any project the wood needs to be prepared properly, either with power tools or hand tools.  You know my preferred way is to use the power tools for the grunt work and the hand tools to refine as needed.  The breadboard will be made of Maple, not Baltic Birch ply as the original one was.  To begin, I laminated three pieces of the Maple together.  Where I purchase wood locally they straight line rip one edge of all their stock.  This edge is fine for guiding against a rip fence but not for gluing.  The first step is to joint/plane the edges to prepare them for laminating together.

Very Precise Way to Check Cut

     In my classes I always stress that setting up your plane is the most important step other than maintaining the sharpest blade you possibly can.  After making your adjustments the term I use as you sneak up on the cut is: "reading the plane".  By that I mean that you should examine the shaving to see if it's even thickness all the way across.  Makes sense that if it is, and if you're planing squarely, the cut is even.  You could check it with a caliper but.......







You can also stretch it out and visually inspect it to see if it is even and has a uniform thickness.  For initial jointing of an edge you can get a pretty decent sized shaving.












     Once the plane is properly set up it's important to determine your grain direction.  Always planing with the grain ensures the smoothest possible surface.  I like to draw arrows on the boards once the grain direction has been figured out.
     The breadboard will be made of three pieces a bit under 6" wide.  My preference is to leave the rough edge on the outside pieces since the clamps will probably chew them up.  The exception would be to rip one down to guide against the tablesaw's rip fence after things are laminated.
     The important thing now is to plane the joining edges square in each direction.  The other thing you should always consider is the grain direction of the face. When the boards are laminated together you want that direction to be the same on each board.  This is done whether the board is smoothed and brought to its' final thickness by a hand plane or a power planer.  If you don't check this, the grain will be alternating and tear out.
     The edge can be checked with a try square against the face.  It's wise to double check that with this method:

Checking Edge to Edge

     The board in the vise has been squared, now the alignment of the two boards is checked by holding a straight edge against both of them, there should be no light showing under it as you check the alignment all the way down.  This will be repeated for however many boards you're going to laminate together.  That's my old Stanley #7 with corrugated sole and it has the original Sweetheart logo.

Boards Marked and Ready

     There are a couple of markings that are commonly used.  The triangular marks will show you the orientation of how the boards go together and the arrows tell you the direction of the face grain for planing later.  Let's laminate these boards!

     Years ago I picked up these 3 clamps from a cabinet shop that was going out of business and I love them. They not only clamp the boards together but they also hold them flat.  When I bought them the guy complained that they were kind of awkward to use because if you didn't get wax paper under them they will stick to whatever it is you're laminating together.  Easy solve, I cut strips of UHWM Polyethylene and attached them to each clamp -- nothing sticks to that!  My preferred glue for laminating is Gorilla Glue, never a visible glue line, easy to scrap off the excess, and no failure that I've ever had when pieces were properly prepared.