I just had a guy call me and ask about off cuts from 4x4's and 4x6's. He is making trophy bases.
Two years ago I saw some really interesting cutting boards. The were made from laminated pieces of Western Larch, with the end grain facing up. The boards were interesting on two counts.
From a practical point of view, a board with edge grain for flat grain on the cutting surface will slowly get a hollow in the center of the cutting area because the knife keeps severing fibres. I don't know where the fibres go (I can guess, but I don't want to think about it) but my favourite cutting board has a hollow in it about 1/4" deep. With the end grain on the cutting surface the fibres won't get cut.
From an aesthetic point of view, the craftsman had created a really interesting pattern. Western Larch has a light, creamy sapwood, and a reddish-brown heartwood. The contrast and proportions remind me of Eastern Red Cedar. I tried to reverse engineer the manufacturing:
- cut some 1x4 or 1x6 boards that have both heartwood and sapwood showing.
- plane the boards and then glue them together in a stack, placing them so the variations in colour form an alternating pattern. In effect you're creating a glued-up 4x4 or 4x6.
- mount the glued-up piece on a mill so the glue joints are vertical and saw off 1" boards. Kind of like making stickers from a stack of 1x4.
- plane the manufactured boards.
- rearrange the manufactured boards to make a symmetrical pattern of heartwood/sapwood and glue them up again.
What you effectively have at this point is bunch of 1x1's glued together to make an interesting pattern of contrasting colours.
Now saw across the laminated "timbers", cutting off pieces 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inch thick.
Sand the faces, bevel the edges and corners, and you have a really interesting cutting board. The ones I saw varied from 3/4" thick 3x5 cheese boards that you'd set on the dinner table, up to 12" x 12" kitchen boards.
Prices were pretty steep. I went back to the shop the next day to take some pictures and they'd all been sold
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