End Grain Cutting Board/Working on the blank

 Hi Everyone,

Well I took the cutting board blank out of the clamps this morning and here it is:

I used Tight Bond wood glue for this:

Next I sanded it with a hand sander to smooth off the top and bottom faces of the board. I managed to get it fairly smooth and it was smooth enough to continue the project. Also the poplar strips took a bit of effort to sand down to the fir strips. After that I trimmed the edges and it looked like this:

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After this, it was time to cut across the grain and create the strips for gluing. I cut them 1 1/2" wide and that went well. Here it is cut into strips:

In the photo you can see some gaps between the strips. This means I didn't get the top sanded perfectly flat. The lesson here is to build the blank, take it to my friends the cabinetmakers and ask them to run through their sanding machines. 
I ran that last strip on the right hand side of the photo through the table saw and just barely shaved the surface and that reduced but didn't totally eliminate the gap.

Now, as to whether or not to stagger the poplar strips. Here's what that looked like:

After some reflection I decided not to stagger the strips but to glue the strips with them lined up together. Here's what that looks like:

I'll wind up with a larger board and the fir portion of the strips line up better and look pretty cool.

I'm going to leave this over night and we'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

VW