if you chop a tree down in a standard way, you will expose the rings of the tree, and this is called the end grain

the end grain is full of xylem and phloem and little shoots for water and nutrients etc to go up and down. i think the idea is that the end grain won’t dull your knife as much, because the knife blade is passing inbetween the grain. a block of end grain wood seems to be stronger too.

so you need some wood - don’t use pine, i think it’s too soft - but it’s usually free because you can find it in the trash. wood with a tight grain is better because there’s less space for bacteria and stuff to hide. an open grain like oak isn’t the best for a chopping surface for this reason. but something like beech is okay.

first you need to plane it - using a machine like this plane 2 sides joined with an edge like this:  |_

then you need to use a machine, let’s call it the thickener, because i don’t know a better name - and you use this machine to make the other two sides the same thickness

it is most important that the blocks you are going to glue together are the same size

otherwise there will be gaps that the glue won’t fill and it’s fucked

this machine is going to make the piece 40mm thick - it takes material from the top surface, so you let it slide through on the planed surface

it comes out the other end, then repeat with the other side.

chop the planed piece of material on the scariest circular saw you can find:

go very slowly at the end of the cut so you keep the edges nice and clean instead of splintered and ragged - this is a problem with pine, a harder wood might not have this problem.

now you have a lot of blocks - great work.

at this stage you can choose to make blocks for babies with the alphabet on them or with farm animals or turtles and whales and butterflies and dragons and sharks.

or you can continue making the chopping board; you’ll just have to glue the pieces together.

it’s easy, but not that much fun.

some of your blocks might be the wrong size, so use the nice ones and figure out how to orient them to hide or show the knots in the wood etc

it’s like a puzzle. and i said it wasn’t that fun, but it kind of is.

i marked the edges where the glue is going to go and i wrote numbers on them so i know the orientation because i am easily confused

take your time gluing them and use a lot of glue. if two sides are going to be glued together, put glue on both sides. the glue will squeeze out anyway. and you can use your fingers because wood glue peels off easily, it’s not stupid like superglue that you have to use sandpaper to remove.

as the pieces have glue on them, i join them with the others, squeezing them in place

so you assembled it and it’s mostly glued. now you squeeze everything together by hand and make it line up - make sure you’re working on a flat even surface and keep it flush to that surface - also don’t let it dry to that surface, maybe put a piece of paper under the blocks

wipe off the excess glue (especially along the edges!) with a damp paper towel

then when the corners match and everything looks good, clamp it

notice the pieces of wood that go in between the clamps and the blocks - they should be the width of the final piece

apply even pressure and don’t tighten one clamp completely, go from one to the next to the next to the next. do you know how to tighten a wheel on a car? you start somewhere and then tighten it a little bit and then move diagonally to the next bolt and tighten it some and then diagonally to the next and so on and so forth until the wheel is tight and this is the same principle of applying relatively equal pressure so the whole thing doesn’t twist and stuff

let the glue dry for about 1 day. maybe less if you’re impatient, but at least 8 hours. at least 4 hours. a minimum of 2 hours but your piece might fall apart so keep that in mind.

after time has passed, 8 hours if you can manage, overnight is best - remove the clamps and get the extra wood pieces off. maybe you’ll have to use a chisel or hit them with a mallet, but be careful not to break your piece in half while you’re doing this

then take it to a sander and make everything nice and make the extra glue go away

your first try will probably look something like this - corners don’t match and there isn’t enough glue

but your second try will be quite okay

now figure out how food safe your glue is.

i used PVAc wood glue in this case because it’s free around here. it’s probably okay. there’s probably more lead and fluoride in your water and more mercury in your fish and more pesticides on your vegetables and more hormones in your meat and more benzene in your teflon and always diesel fumes in your grey grey city - so something like wood glue is small in the scale of dangerous things, but maybe find something safe anyway