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As you search for an artisan cutting board from Wooded or other makers, you will often come across references to grain orientation. This often appears as something like “End-Grain Cutting Board”, or a few similar terms. Many wonder what this means, and whether it really matters. Let’s dive in and explore the differences, and how these topics impact our portfolio at Wooded Carving Company.
Fundamentally, wood surfaces can be arranged in one of two manners. For now, let’s call them “End Grain” or “Long Grain”. If you can envision browsing through a hardware or lumber store and looking at a stud or 2x4, you’d likely be seeing a long, skinny, roughly 8-12 foot long plank of wood. If you looked at that plank on its widest face (”on top”) or its narrow face (”on edge”), you’d see the grain lines going side-to-side, the Long Grain of the wood. If you pulled it off the rack and looked at the small end of the wood, you'd be seeing the same grains but in an End Grain orientation.
In the vast majority of scenarios, whether in construction, furniture, tables, and other wood surfaces, you’re almost always looking at, and using the Long Grain surface. Only in a few applications would you ever be exposed to the End Grain of the wood, and cutting boards are one of them. Why, you ask?
Cutting boards, unlike many other surfaces, are meant for… cutting. Unlike most other surfaces, you get a cutting board with the intention of abusing it; gouging into it with your best, sharpest knife as you chop, slice and carve your way through food. And for that particular use case, End Grain is simply superior. It exhibits what some would call a softer feeling on your knife, resulting in a nicer tactile sensation as you bang the blade into the board. That feeling is not just smoother on your wrist, but it’s gentler on your knife, dulling it less quickly. It also results in a cleaner, longer-lasting cutting board as End Grain is known to have self-healing properties.
We’ll admit, this pitch can seem like magic beans (until you’ve owned a proper End Grain board). But it’s real and scientifically-rooted in the properties of wood. A plank of wood is a slice of a tree trunk, which is a structure designed to transport moisture and nutrients from the ground to branches and leaves. The trunk is a dense bundle of wood grains, which act like a bunch of tiny straws to achieve this effect. Like a plastic straw or a piece of paper, if you were to stand them up and slice down with a knife from the top (don’t do this - just imagine), it’d be an effortlessly smooth cut.
In the same way, when a wood surface is made out of a bunch of end grain slices, glued together… you get the same smooth cuts. And, unlike paper or straws, because there are thousands of tiny grains smooshed together, they support each other, pushing the gouges from your knife back together. It all results in a surface with fewer knife marks, smoother cutting action, and greater durability. Additionally, wood, particularly in this orientation, exhibits anti-microbial properties where these cooperating grains are hostile toward the growth of bacteria and germs. With a little help from good cleaning practices and suitable oil & wax finishing, the result is a superior cutting board that can last decades or even a lifetime.
Finally, End Grain boards (done right) can look really cool; either in expressing the natural character of the wood in a unique way (that’s what we do) or offering the possibility of assembling them into crazy, often-beautiful and sometimes mind-bending patterns.
Yes, you can. And many people do. When you pick up a cheap cutting board (we don’t recommend them for other reasons), almost all of them are constructed with the Long Grain as the surface. And you can indeed cut on them. You’ll just end up with a mutually negative relationship; with your board dulling your knife and your knife beating up your board with cut marks that don’t heal. Also, it just feels less comfortable on your wrist. And here at Wooded Carving Company, we’re always thinking about satisfying your wrist with good wood!
These are just different words for Long Grain boards that some use to describe their work, relative to the hardwood planks they used to make them. You’ll often see boards described as Edge Grain appearing as a larger amount of narrow strips, where Face Grain are fewer, wider strips. But functionally, they’re the same grain orientation as they came from the tree trunk, thus they’re all going to exhibit the same cutting characteristics. One is not better than the other, and neither are as good for cutting as End Grain!
Okay, let’s re-imagine the 2x4 stud again. Lets say you wanted to build a deck. Would it be easier to chop a bunch of studs up into dozens of pieces each and glue the hundreds of pieces together to make a deck (end grain), or just assemble a row of your long 2x4 studs next to each other (long grain)?
Making an end-grain cutting board is just more complicated and laborious. It takes about three times the labor, has multiple opportunities for error and failure, consumes more supplies, and is harder to sand and finish. So, that’s why they’re often at least double the price. It’s also why you won’t see a whole lot of discount stores or cheap imports of End Grain boards… and almost certainly not good ones.
It’s pretty simple. When we say we’re selling you a cutting board, it’s End Grain, period.
We wouldn’t call anything else a cutting board. End Grain boards are at the center of the Wooded universe. We are passionate about assembling End Grain boards with the artistic spirit of our Cape Cod roots; bespoke, natural, and respectful of the natural grains of the tree that was sacrificed for a beautiful cutting surface you can use for many years.
That said, Long Grain boards have their place, and we love making those too. We call them Charc Boards, and they are fantastic for putting together a beautiful charcuterie arrangement, or using as a serving tray surface for the center of your table. And of course, you could use these for the occasional cutting (often with dull knives for things like cheese or butter).
