MowryJournal.com   Life's Passions

It was time to embrace the chaos and make some chaos boards. I mean, look around. Right?

I last did this 5 years ago, and my techniques have been refined a bit. To make these boards, I selected 256 boards, each 24″ long. The boards were from 21 hardwood species, and were glued up initially into 15x different laminates. These had 3x different thicknesses, which were smoothed and then cut into strips that were 1-5/8″ wide to turn them into end grain boards.

And I was just getting started.

Those 1-5/8″ strips were then selected so that each of the 13x end grain glue ups I made had at least one strip from each of the original laminates. After the glue was fully cured, each end grain glue up was cut apart at a 5* angle. Glue cured, and they were then cut again, each at a different angle. Different widths. More glue curing time, and then I did it again. And then a 5th glue-up to get to where we are today: 9x very colorful chaos boards. Each is a minimum of 13-1/2″ x 19″; most are 14″ x 19″.

And there is a bonus, a new design of chaos board that in this case only has 2 species of wood. I call this design Confetti. Here you see that board as it started through the CNC for initial smoothing. That is a difficult step, as the multiple glue-ups leave a very ragged top and bottom that requires significant machining to get smooth. That process started on the CNC, and then moved to the drum sander … then finally to hand sanding and my normal hand-rubbed finish of mineral oil and locally-harvested beeswax.

The main project, though, was what became 9x Chaos Boards featuring 21x species, from 3 continents. Here are the woods used:

• Afrormosia
• Ash
• Black Walnut
• Bloodwood, AKA Satine
• Bubinga
• Canarywood
• Cherry, AKA Black Cherry
• Goncalo Alves, AKA Tigerwood
• Hard Maple
• Hickory
• Honey Locust
• Jatoba, AKA Brazilian Cherry
• Makore
• Osage Orange, AKA Hedge
• Padauk
• Purpleheart
• Sapele, AKA African Mahogany
• Wenge
• White Oak
• Yellowheart
• Zebrawood

All of the boards have a chamfered edge (a cut, in this case, at a 45* angle) on each side, for easy pick up of the board. To ensure a dependable, un-moving work surface, all boards have non-skid rubber feet held on with stainless steel screws for long life. 5 of these boards have juice grooves that are 3/4″ wide and 3/8″ deep. 5 have no juice grooves, just the way Mrs M likes them. You get to choose to be groovy, or not. Mrs M made her choice. Just saying. I mean, she married me. Obviously.

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