Here is the drilling jig I used:  Cheese Slicer Drilling Jig Plans (28794 downloads )

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It doesn’t take much lumber to make one of these cheese slicers. All in all, the board needs to be around 9 1/2″ x 5 3/4″ or so. You can make it shorter or longer if you like. You can even change the shape up a bit if you are feeling frisky!

For this board, I pulled a few boards from my scrap bin and decided to go with some Curly Maple, a piece of Curly Cherry, Redheart and a little more Cherry to finish out an edge. This is just angle of that cut… Cutting large sheets of plywood on my table saw without any sort of infeed support or and outfeed table is quite a chore. I ended up putting my workbench up against my saw to use as an outfeed table for this project because of working with these long cuts. Next, from the strip that was left over, I cut off a 1″ strip to use later as a foot for the plywood storage area. Because pretty much all commercial grade lumber you buy from big box stores are not all that consistant in size, I decided to joint the edges. Just like I would normally do, I had already cut the boards down to rough length. With the board jointed on one edge, I made all of my 2x6s 5 1/4″ wide and all of the 2x4s 3 1/4″ wide. Currently, because I’m currently in a bit of a shop-transition phase… I have not assembled my new dust collector and ductwork yet. So my jointer is just creating a nice pile of shavings. I setup a stop block toward the end of my fence at the length I wanted to cut in for the top rack storage above the sheet goods. Because I had the sheet goods portion set back at around a 5 degree angle, I needed this cut to be here so there would be enough lumber to support the upper racks.

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I made a beautiful brick pattern End-Grain cutting board out of maple, cherry and walnut. It was finished with a good soaking of mineral oil and then a final buffing of my mineral oil & beeswax mixture. Check out the video below to see how I made it!

I stated by flatening all of my rough cut lumber on my jointer.

And then made all of the boards the same thickness at the planer.

At the table saw, I cut one strip of maple at roughly 3 1/4″ wide and two strips at 3″ wide. Then one strip of cherry at 3″ wide. and one at  roughly 1 3/4″ wide.

Then I cut strips of walnut at 1/4″ wide to create a dark “mortar” look in between the lighter bricks.

Then I glued up all of the strips to make the first glue-up panel.

Then I cut a few shorter strips of walnut and made a panel just as wide as the previous panel.

Then I cut all of them into 1 1/2″ strips.

I cut the walnut into 1/4″ end-grain strips after that and then glued it all into a brick pattern.

I then put a good size chamfer on all four corners.

After that I lowered the bit and put about a 1/8″ chamfer around the whole board.

Then I moved on to sanding… Lots and lots of sanding. I started with 80 grit. Moved on to 120, 220, 320 and then wet the board. After the board dried, I went back and sanded again with 220, 320 and then 400 grit. Wetting the wood raises the fibers of the wood and allows me to sand to a much smoother final finish.

I brand all of my work. Here I’m showing how I use my logo burning brand tool.

I soaked the board in mineral oil and let the board take in as much oil as possible.

Then I heated up my mineral oil & beeswax mixture and applied that to the board. As this began to dry, I buffed that in to a final finish.

Here are a few more final pictures!

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I build these Chinese Checker boards that store the marbles and hang on the wall. If you want to see how I do it, watch the video!

I began this build by creating a pattern I could drill out on my drill press. I drilled the holes at 5/8″ diameter to fit a router bushing that I will be using on my plunge router base. I created the pattern to allow the marbles to be spaced 1″ apart from each other. I’m sharing this pattern free to be downloaded below:

I highly recommend using a center punch or an awl to leave an indention in the wood at the center of each hole. Using a 5/8″ forstner bit and having a center indention, it falls into place pretty well, makes drilling much quicker and more accurate.

I started with some rough sawn spalted poplar. After milling, I created a panel just above 16″ x 20″ in size. The final size ended up as 16″ x 18″

Once the panel was dry and sanded, I clamped the new plunge template in place and began boring 121 shallow holes for the marbles using a 1/2″ round nose bit. I set the bit depth to cut down just far enough to create a half sphere. Perfect for the marbles to settle into.

Next I used a marble storage bit that I purchased through Amazon to cut short marble storage areas in the top and bottom of the game board. To do this I setup stop blocks on my router fence and made a plunge cut to start. This bit

After finishing all 6 of the marble storage slots, I setup more stop blocks to place two keyhole slots on the back of the board to allow it to be hung on the wall.

Continuing with the router, I put a 3/8″ roundover on each of the corners. Then a 1/4″ roundover all around the edges and moved on to sanding. Lots and lots of sanding…

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