Another birthday coming up, this time my mom’s. I thought I’d try my hand at a houndstooth board. It’s a classic pattern and moderately challenging. The board is made up of only three different square “blocks”. Two are separate species of solid wood, but the challenging one is a laminate of four layers formed into a square. The challenge is cutting a smaller square out of the larger profile rotated 45 degrees from the original square profile. You’ll see what I mean when we get into it.
To cut the 45-degree profile, I built a special rip jig I wrote up separately.
This board starts with seventh grade math. Remember trigonometry? Because the laminated profile must be rotated 45 degrees, the points of the smaller square must be exactly the height of the larger square once rotated. The height of the four laminate strips add up to the smaller square’s height multiplied by 1.414. That makes each strip’s thickness 0.356 times the final height of the board’s block dimension. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so to here is the drawing from my notebook. The upper left corner illustrates the “square rotated in the square”
The first step is to make the laminated squares. If you look at the lower left corner of the notebook page, my target square size is 7/8”, so the dimensions of laminated strips are 1-1/4” wide and the 5/16” thick. I started with 8/4 rough cut maple and walnut and created a reference face and edge using the jointer. The second face is made parallel by running it through the thickness planer, and the second edge is cut on the table saw to finish off the boards.
The strips can be cut using the band saw or the table saw. I used a table saw, but for safety’s sake, I cut the strips from the far edge of the board rather than try to push a narrow strip between the saw blade and the fence. It takes longer to do it this way because the fence is moved each time a cut is made.
Luckily, on a Vega fence, there is a dial screw that moves the fence. Each time I indexed the fence, I took a measurement before cutting the strip. It was a little clunky, but went relatively quickly. At this point, the strips don’t need to be precise. I do try to get them close to the final dimension to save material, but the final thickness will be milled in the thickness planer.
With the strips ready to be milled, I ran them all through the planer to their final thickness. As you can see in the photo, the total thickness came out exactly to the target of 1-1/4”. The width is not yet important, but width-matching the maple and the walnut helps to get the assembly as close to square as possible during glue-up.
With all the strips complete, glue them up in alternating four-layer assemblies.
In the meantime, I mill the solid walnut and maple squares to a dimension slightly larger than the final dimension. I’m shooting for 7/8”, so I milled them to about 0.92” All the pieces will be finished at once using the same planer setting, so leave a little extra material for now.
Once the glue is dry on the laminated profiles, The glued edges are squared to the faces on the jointer. The pieces are then made perfectly square by milling the width to the exact dimension as the height of the four layers. This ensures the alternating strips sit at a perfect 45 degree angle in the ripping jig.
With all the laminated lengths finished, I ripped two corners off using the jig. Be careful to leave a little bit of a flat between the angles. The final dimensions will be reached using the thickness planer.
I used the thickness planer to remove the peaks opposite the flats, but that took quite a while because of the small depth of cut. If I had to do it again, I’d cut all four corners off using the jig, then finish them up on the planer.
The trickiest part of planing the lengths to final thickness is getting the corner of the profile to intersect with the glue line between the two center layers. A bit of trial and error and you get the hang of which faces to plane to get the final result. Here are the profiles almost finished. You can see there are still very small chamfers on the corners. It’s important the corners are sharp so there are no gaps in the final assembly.
Once close to the final dimension, the lengths of solid maple and walnut are run through as well. This brings all the pieces to the exact same dimensions. Remember to rotate the pieces 90 degrees each time to keep them perfectly square.
The crosscut sled stop is set to the thickness of the board plus about 1/8” for flattening and sanding. Crosscut all the lengths into the final blocks. Once all the blocks are complete it’s time for glue-up. It would be much easier to build this board if the lengths could be glued together before crosscutting them to length, but I couldn’t imagine a way to perfectly align them during the gluing process. Because of the nature of the layered/angled pieces, they can’t be accurately milled after glue-up like you would do with a solid checkerboard pattern. Each block will be glued up separately, so it will be a race against time.
I clamped two cauls to the table at a perfect right angle and used this as the starting corner of the glue-up. I laid a piece of packing tape on caul surfaces touching the board. I also laid waxed paper on the table before clamping down the reference cauls. My apologies, I didn’t get any photos of the glue station setup.
My strategy was to take a row of blocks, remove all but the leftmost block and keep it standing in its original position. The rest of the row is tipped forward onto its side and each block rolled to the right one flat. I laid all the blocks out this way prior to opening the glue. Holding each row tightly and spreading glue across the entire top surface of the group allowed me to quickly place them back upright and rotated back to their original position gluing the row together. I then spread glue on the exposed face of that row to accept the next row and repeated the process.
Occasionally, I’d pull a row tight against the others to be sure they didn’t start setting up out of alignment. Once all the blocks are in place, the two other cauls are added, and the entire assembly is clamped. Here is a timelapse of the glue-up.
I pulled the assembly out of the fixture after a few hours and stood it on its edge overnight so the glue on the faces would dry fully. If the board is lying tightly against the waxed paper, the glue squeeze-out will take forever to dry. The last thing I want to do is clog up my drum sander with half-dry glue.
The board is flattened on the drum sander. As I’ve mentioned before and will always mention, do not run an end grain cutting board through a thickness planer. It is dangerous to do so.
Once flat, the board is sanded with 80 grit until all the marks from the drum sander are gone. I then ease the edges using a roundover bit in a router. For this board, I undercut the bottom with a 45-degree angle to add a handle. This will make it easier for my mom to pick it up.
The board is finish sanded through all the grits to 320 and a logo burned into the underside of the board.
Finally, pour food grade mineral oil over the board and let it soak in for a few minutes. I wipe off the excess and let it sit out overnight. I then put the board in an old pillowcase, wrap it up, and let is sit for about a week to soak up any excess oil. The final finish is Howard’s Butcher Block Conditioner.
