Why End Grain Cutting Boards?

We all inherently know it, but I’ll say it anyway. Wood has grain. You can get very nuanced about the microbiology of what ~grain~ actually is, but let’s leave it nicely that grain is an organized accumulation of cells, hard structures that cells produce, and vessels. Just think of it like a whole bunch of fibers or strands, all running in more or less the same direction. That direction is always up, or vertical, or running with the direction of the trunk. Think of a tree like string cheese, the fibers are running with the “trunk” of the string cheese, right? So let’s keep thinking about cheese here. No one would argue if we said, depending on how you bite or go after that string cheese, the properties are going to feel different. That’s because you are experiencing the cheese grain in different orientations. Another analogy would be like a beer can. You can crumple it from the sides very easily, but it’s much harder to smush it from the top. You are experiencing the “grain” of the beer can differently depending on how you orient it. 

So let’s get back to wood now. Wood is just like string cheese or a beer can. Depending on how you force it, or cut on it, or use it, you will be experiencing grain in different orientations, and you will see different properties. 

Let’s set one more foundational piece of information here. Wood is cut at lumber mills in a standard way. Long planks to utilize the most material from a tree. Great! We’ve got all the info we need now to get into it. These standard cuts of lumber show three different grain orientations. Face grain, edge grain, and end grain.

Face grain is the most abundantly seen and easiest to utilize on standard cuts of lumber. If you look at a wide, flat plank of wood, that broad surface is face grain. Most any wood floor is face grain, most furniture is face grain. Face grain is the weakest grain orientation. 

Next is edge grain. If you grab that same plank of lumber, put your finger on the long and narrow side, that’s edge grain. If you’ve ever played shuffle board, you’ll remember the long narrow wood strips, that’s edge grain. It is stronger than face grain, but it is harder to extract just based on the standard cut of lumber. You have to take those flat planks, cut them into long strips, flip the strips 90 degrees, and perfectly glue everything together. But it is a stronger grain orientation!

The last is end grain. On a whole tree, if you cut a cross section and were counting tree rings, you would be looking at end grain wood. But remember, we don’t get the luxury of wood coming to us however we’d like, we get it from standard cuts of lumber. So on a standard long flat wide plank, can you guess which side is end grain? It’s the tiny rectangles at the end of the plank. But wow, they are stroooong little rectangles. Much stronger than the other grain orientations. Biologically, trees evolved for this orientation to be so strong because they have to support their massive weight all day, every day.

So when making a cutting board, we need to piece wood together to produce a big enough surface to cut on! With face grain, it’s easy! Just cut two or three planks at 20 inches long or so, then glue them together, bam, plenty of surface to cut on. But it’s pretty scratch prone, not very tough. With edge grain, you have to cut long narrow strips from the standard planks, maybe 20-30 strips, flip all the strips one time, glue them together. Little more durable, but still not the best. End grain is by far the hardest to produce, but very worth it. You have to take that standard long plank of lumber, look at the butt of the plank, that tiny little rectangle, then go harvest upwards of 100 tiny end grain rectangles down the length of the plank, then piece them together perfectly. It takes so much longer, it takes more wood, and it is very taxing on tools, which means it truly is a harder grain orientation because it is more resistant to woodworking tools. 

The end result is a cutting board that is wildly durable, long lasting, scratch resistant, and has the opportunity for a vast range of aesthetic patterns and designs. We know they are more expensive than a Walmart cutting board, we know they are more expensive than a face or edge grain cutting board, but they are worth it. They are worth it because of how strong and aesthetically pleasing they are. These are the boards that world class chefs use, you can’t make a more durable cutting board out of wood than end grain. Remember, we have just oriented the wood grain so that the strongest direction of the fibers are facing directly up at the chef, it just takes a while to do, and it is very difficult to do well. Outer Woods will continue to push the limits of designs, patterns, and craftsmanship of our end grain cutting boards and we think you, chef, deserve to cut on one.