Made My Best Friend A Birthday Gift

Finished Product - a 2" thick solid maple butchers block made from reclaimed maple flooring. On a collapsible 2"x2" construction grade pine sawhorse. The table top itself is put together with titebond 3, a wood glue rated for non direct food contact, and finished with tung oil, another food safe finish. Sanded it through the grades to 1000 grit, so it feels like silk. I'm super proud of this, as I had no idea the whole way through if this was even possible.

This is my best friend hard at work. He competes professionally at bbq competitions. If that's not impressive enough he scores incredibly well especially considering the group of peers he competes against. Our last competition there was a team from the local cooking trade school, at least 5 restaurants, professional chefs from catering companies and people sponsored by the bbq manufacturers.

My buddy shows up in his little work trailer and hauls plastic benches out and is competing against people with massive live-in RV's, while we are setting up a tent. We boil water to wash with a little camp stove. But he has fun, that dish up there. It took 2nd place out of 42 teams. And this is just his hobby.

I should preface this picture by saying, "I'm not a good friend." I would do anything for my friends, but I'm also pretty antisocial and get very swept up in my own things. I forget to stay in touch with people and as a result have lost a lot of friends along the way because we just drifted apart.

My friend (I'm purposely not naming him here) and I have known each other for almost 2 decades. And through all of that has never given up on me. He still always invites me out, gets me to do stuff and calls when he can. He has kids now and less free time, but I help at every bbq competition I can. He made me more confident, puts up with my lack of communication and has literally always been there for me.

All of my friends and I have always had a deal that we don't give birthday gifts. Well the asshole got around this by giving my wife and I a house warming. That's a smoker behind me. He dropped it off and barely hung around for a cup of coffee while i was (am) mid rennovatjon. I still don't have words for how awesome it was.

At this point I knew I had to do something for him.

This is the picture that started it all. Wife and I bought a 20 year old house with 20 year old beaten up floors. It all had to go, so I tore it out. The posted this on Facebook. One of my fb friends asked if he could have it.

Sure come get it. Haven't heard from him since, this was in July (it's sept).

At some point my wife said she wanted to replace the kitchen island counter with a butchers block.

Ikea has them for $100, "solid wood" which actually means 1.5" of plywood with 1/4" of birch on top. Pfffffft.

Solid block from a real store. Starts at $500 what the fuck?

Hold on a second, I've got a shit ton of maple in my garage.................. click whirrrr, thump, idea

Tablesaw.... run the removed flooring through at about 2.25" this takes off the tongue and the nails, that were pointed at my fingers as I was feeding it. Fucking terrifying (note the push stick and the guard on the blade. I used both.

Flip board around take off the groove. Board is now dimensioned on both sides.

Box of removed flooring.

Boards with one side cut off.

Very pretty grain.

Cut off the other side to leave a width of 2".

Buy a thickness planer, run the wood through to remove the finish on one side and the grooves from the other. Each board is now just under 3/4" tall. Make a lot of little wooden curls.

Lay a bunch of pieces together stacked on their sides. This might actually work.... hmmmm

Use a miter saw to cut the ends off. Boards are now square in all dimensions and fit flush together.

Talk to Wife, explain I want to make one for friend before our kitchen (still in shambles for the renos) because I think we should do something nice for friend. She actually agrees it's a great idea (she likes him cause he is a good friend and helps to keep me social). And offers to help me build it (she doesn't help lol).

Hand select each board so that the nicest edge (one with the most grain) is facing up. Lay out into roughly 2x5 plank. And clamp the wood gently to inspect it before applying glue or something silly.

Lots of Boards, cutting the front and back off here, this gets rid of that last little tongue and groove that helped the boards fit together. Each piece ended up being about 3/4" thick, 2" wide, and between 12' and 7' long. I had lots of shorter pieces, but they wouldn't go through my planer.

Final pattern, time to glue. At this point all I've done is roughly lay out all the pieces and start figuring out what my final dimensions will be.

Fuck up first attempt at glueing, bash apart in the first 5 minutes because it's hot and the glue set up to fast. Attempt to work from end to end and clamp in between to keep level. Doesn't work well. End up with a 1/16" bevel in it. Fuck. Lots of sanding.

Second panel, on glass table with wax paper under, and flat board to press against clamped to table.

Glue three strips, clamp, wait 10 minutes, glue three more clamp repeat etc. Finish panel, clamp over night.

Gouge a chunk out of your finger on the board edge. Bleed profusely, throw out board you bled on as this will be used for food prep #overlyparanoid

Run the two panels through the planer to smooth them out (my planer can only handle.12.5" at a time. Do one then the other so.they stay exactly the same height. Do both sides.

There is something addicting about this. I was only taking off 1/32" at a time. But slowly the beauty was revealed. It's pretty amazing the grain that comes out of wood like this. I honestly thought the maple wouldn't have a lot of character when stack on edge like this.

Glue the two pieces together. With titebond 3 (food safe glue) I used this the whole way through. And wait... and wait... and wait. I let it dry for a full 3 days just to be safe.

Because of the way I built the first panel it had a bout a 1/16" of an inch wow in it. So I ended up taking the belt sander to it, to smooth this out.

I cut the two ends off by clamping a straight edge to the panel and then running my circular saw slowly down the end. You can see the mark my guide left.

Sand for fricking ever, 50 grit, 60 grit, 120 grit, 180 grit, 320 grit, 600, then 1000. It's a cutting board, and it'll get beater up a lot, but I wanted it to be nice.

I made a mixture of wood glue and saw dust from the sanding to turn into a paste that I forced into any little cracks between the boards that may have appeared. I did this over and over, between sanding with 1000 grit to make sure the top was completely sealed. I didn't want to risk any food particles staying in the surface.

After getting it perfectly smooth with 1000 grit, I then applied tung oil, allowed it to soak in, wiped off the excess, and let it sit overnight. Repeated the next night, but sanded it with 1000grit again, wiped off the excess, and it has now been sitting for a couple weeks to allow the mineral spirits to evaporate.

Tung oil hardens chemically once it penetrates the wood, and while it offers no real surface protection, it is food safe, prevents mildew, resists some water, doesn't affect those with allergies and more.

Now I needed something to hold it up for my friend to work on. My father offered to help me build some sawhorses, and we had a lot of fun banging these together over the course of an afternoon. They collapse easily, but honestly, don't suit the aesthetic of table top at all. Much to chunky. So it was back to the drawing board.

New legs from 2x2 pine. Which is ugly wood. Really ugly wood.

One half of my new sawhorses, 90 degree pieces for stability, 25 degree angle on the legs to allow a good height, the other legs will sit outside these.

Legs set 2.

Pine is shit wood for finishing. It looks boring, doesn't take stain well (gets weird colors and has rings that won't take color at all), has a pretty rough finish and generally just annoys me. It's meant for construction, not for beautiful works of art, so what do we do with something that's ugly? Burn it with fire!

Sanded 60, 120 and burnt.

Doesn't look TOO bad, sanded it to 180, and applied a coat of Tung Oil ( I really like this stuff).

Burnt pine with tung oil applied.

Sand to 320 after the oil has been applied, and then apply a coat of clear polyurethane. There's a good chance these legs are going to see a lot of moisture, either rain or wet grass or what have you, so we better apply something to waterproof it again. They're starting to look shiny.

Jeeze that almost glows. Happy with the result. I sanded it with 600 grit to remove the high spots and some drips (I've never used poly before). The piece of wood with the two holes on the bench above has had tung oil and poly applied, you can see how ugly the pine actually is, unless you throw some fire on it, ahaha.

I used 2 sections of jack chain to make sure the legs don't extend too far. This set the height at 37.5" which is the perfect work height for my friend. The table top just rests on the legs, and the whole thing can be put in his trailer on its side and barely take up any space.

He's seen it before, but I'm going to deliver it this weekend. Wish me luck!