TRUE PRECISION ARTISTRY IN WOOD — He makes extraordinary 1,000-piece end grain cutting boards with his Woodmaster Drum Sander

Dennis gave this creation the name “Impossible” because it’s impossible for 3-D forms to do what he’s made them do. In our view, doing the precision work Dennis does is darn near impossible!

Here’s Dennis in his show with his 2675 Woodmaster Drum Sander. That’s where you’ll often find him — some of his creations take 200 hours of shop time. Design time not included!

A lot of retired folks just while the days away watching TV. That would never do for dedicated do-it-yourselfers like Woodmaster Owner, Dennis Westphal. “I’d go nuts just sitting around,” he says. Once he made all the furniture his home could hold, he started making his amazing end grain cutting boards. Some are for use in the kitchen but others are made for display. Dennis calls them “decorative cutting boards.” We call them true artistry in wood.

“I’m a retired engineer who’s been doing woodworking for close to 60 years. I spend a lot of time in my shop. I use my Woodmaster Drum Sander almost every day.

Dennis’s “Expansion” cutting board seems to expand from the center outward but it’s an illusion — it’s actually perfectly flat.

Dennis’s “Contraction” cutting board appears to bulge in the center and contract at the edges. But this is a clever illusion, too!

Thousands of individual pieces — true artistry in wood

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I give them as gifts — Christmas, weddings, and so on. I make a lot of them, both functional and decorative. The decorative ones are artworks rather than ‘working’ cutting boards. I make all of them with my 26″ Woodmaster Drum Sander.

All are made from end grain cherry, maple, and walnut. Some have over 1,000 individual pieces of wood, some as small as one-quarter inch square.

“Here’s how I make them.”

Here’s how I make them. First, I dream up some kind of pattern. I have a picture in my head of what I want to do, then I lay it out using a CAD program on my computer so I can see what they’re going to look like. The nice thing about CAD drawings is I can modify them easily. Sometimes I make a dozen versions. Then I print out dimension drawings.

Tolerances to ten-thousandths of an inch

I rough-cut wood on my table saw, then put it through my Woodmaster Drum Sander. I can get the wood down to a few thousandths of an inch with my Woodmaster. I can control the thickness to 0.010, that’s ten thousandths of an inch! I really enjoy the Woodmaster Drum Sander for the precision it gives me.

A curved-line design creates the illusion of an undulating surface in one of Mr. Westphal’s creations. But it’s an illusion — the surface is flat as a board.

When the pieces are particularly small, I use double stick tape to attach them to a piece of MDF and I run that through the sander. I tape down and sand as many pieces at one time as I can. When I sand the pieces to size, I take them off.

Then I glue up the pieces. I use Tightbond 3 because it has a long ‘open’ or setup time. I can’t glue very many pieces together at once so I make a series of separate glued-up subsets of maybe 10 blocks at a time, then glue the subsets together.

Here’s a CAD drawing Dennis sent us – his precision plan for one of his decorative cutting boards…

…and here’s the finished cutting board. Guess Dennis believes in the old saying, “Plan the work and work the plan!” Sure works for him.

200 hours work — “And I love doing it.”

Some of my decorative cutting boards take 200 hours of shop time, and that’s not counting design time. And I love doing it. I’m retired, but my brain doesn’t shut off. I’d go nuts if I all I did was sit and watch TV.

“I wanted a machine that would give me the speed and precision I need.”

I got the Woodmaster Drum Sander because I wanted a machine that would give me precision and speed for the kind of work I do. I knew the precision this Drum Sander would give me, and it handles end grain wood more safely than other machines. I did a lot of online research and read reviews and comments from Woodmaster owners. I asked questions and got pretty positive results. I chose the 26” 2675 because it’s big enough to handle any project I’d want to make. After all, I’m not making full-size doors.

Here’s Dennis’s workshop, neat as a pin with his Woodmaster front and center. He told us his biggest project recently was, “getting my shop cleaned up so I could take photos!”

That’s what I tell people who ask me about Woodmaster. Think of what you want to use your sander for, what you want to make. Get a machine that’s big enough to handle it. But remember a big drum sander will sand small things but a small drum sander won’t do big things.

I like this Woodmaster Drum Sander. I use it almost every day. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have it. I guess I’d have to get another one! Thanks for the opportunity to show some of my projects to other woodworkers.”

— Dennis Westphal, Woodmaster Drum Sander Owner, Galva, Kansas

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