Has anyone mixed end grain with face grain in making a cutting board? Would that combination be more prone to twisting, bowing, or cracking? I’m working with kiln dried walnut, cherry, and maple. Attached is a picture of the general idea.
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This particular layout should actually be OK. Wood wants to expand more across the face than along it’s length. For our purposes, assume length doesn’t change AT ALL.
So you can sketch out where things will want to expand, and you can then see if you have expanding areas abutting non-expanding areas.
Since face grain expands across it’s width, the longer pieces expand across their width. The endgrain (viewed from above) expands both ways. I’ll assume the squares in this picture are end-grain.
I didn’t mark in everything, but you get the idea. There’s nowhere where an expanding surface is paired to a non-expanding surface.
The one area that is ‘poorly paired’ is looking at the end of the board. Their we have vertical grain abutting horizontal grain (at the ends of the long pieces). However, the total distance is short, so expansion is not very likely to cause problems.
The biggest problem may be that gluing endgrain to face grain is just not a very strong joint, so the glue joint between the end grain peices and the longer pieces may not be very strong.
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Thank-you @mhotchin, that makes sense. I’m glad you also mentioned the glue joint and possible issues. I’ll have some left over pieces to make a small test board to play with.