A friend of mine asked me to make her a cutting board. However, before I could start that project, I needed to make a jig for cutting material with the grain - in other words, along the length of the timber instead of across it.

The simplist way of achieving this was to to make a square that attaches to the board - a stop block that spans the width of the circular saw sled.

I rummaged around for some scrap materials in my work shop and cut them to size. had forgotten to turn on the video but I cut 4 pieces at 400mm and 1 peice at 500mm. This 500mm piece fits across the sled and will act as the stop.

Next I began assemling these pieces with just some wood screws. I used my square board to line things up. I predrilled and the parts and screwed it all together. I ended up having to use my long bit for the screws as I had temporarily misplaced my usual bits.

So how does this work? As you can see, the large stop block also acts a guide for cutting straight. It just gets attached to board with clamps. As you can also see, I made a 2nd smaller version for the other side as I wasn't keen to stick my fingers below the runners.

Usuing my jigs, I sliced up pieces of rimu and quila for the cutting board project.

I then took the slices and glued and clamped them together. My clamps are home made using blocks, threaded rods and nuts to squeezes things together - really simple bar clamps. Gluing stuff like this is always a bit of a messy job.

This cutting board was going to be wider than my thicknesser so I made this in 2 parts.

After running the parts through the thicknesser, I glued and clamped the 2 parts together in the same was as you saw for each of the slices.

Next, I scraped off the excess glue and sanded it all down.

Then I trimmed the ends down to size followed by more sanding and rounding off edges.

Finally, I finished off the project with copious coats of vegetable oil. The first board I had made turned out to have flaws in it so I cut it down to make some coasters to go with the board.

Hope you enjoyed the project and thanks for watching.