The BEST Way to Make End Grain Coasters
What are End Grain Coasters?
End grain coasters use the lumber’s top and bottom edges as the surface holding the drinking glass. Imagine a tree as a bunch of straws taped together. The ends of the straws are the top and bottom of the tree. When the tree is cut down and laying on the ground, the ends of the straws are facing sideways and the middle of the straws are facing up and down. The ends of the straws are a wood board’s end grain. The flat surface of the board (the middle of the straws) is called face grain. If we want to make end grain coasters, we need a plan for turning those straws over so they are again facing up and down.
If just about all of the wood furniture we use is face grain, like a large table top, why use end grain coasters? The short answer is, you can make some wild looking patterns!
How to Make End Grain Coasters
You can easily make end grain coasters by cutting a thick board into thin slices and then laying the slices flat so the end grain is facing up and down. That’s it! Done! Easy day!
I can imagine that’s not a very satisfying answer, but it’s an honest and important one. When we break it down to its simplest form, we need to slice one or more boards and lay them flat. The more boards we use, the more intricate the coaster can look.
Wood coasters are typically around 3/8” to 1/2” thick and 3-3/4” to 4” square. You could take a 4” wide x 4” thick x 12” long board and cut it into 1/2” slices, each one being a coaster. However, the key to a cool end grain coaster is making that 12” long board into the pattern you want. Note – I say a 12” long board for explanation purposes. The actual size of the materials can vary depending on what you’re making.
Basic Wood Coaster Designs
Let’s say you want dark coasters with thin, light-colored stripes. You can make them by gluing dark and light-colored boards together in a repeating fashion. In this case, you could glue a 3/8” thick x 4” wide walnut board to a 1/8” thick x 4” wide maple board. Then add another walnut board, and then another maple board. Keep doing this until you get to the size coaster you want. By gluing your pieces into a large 4” block, you only need to slice it to the desired thickness of the coasters.
Complex Wood Coaster Designs
We described a very simple pattern, with limited colors and sizes. Complex patterns often take gluing different boards together, cutting them to a specific size, and then regluing them to more boards. It’s like making something, destroying, and reassembling it into something way better!
To do this, we need to rewire our brains and tackle the challenge from a different angle. I take this into consideration when I create downloadable project guides, such as my plaid end grain coaster plans. It’s why I spend so much time showing diagrams and explaining each step, all for the sake of rewiring our brains so we can easily create seemingly complex projects.
If you want to make end grain coasters with a complex design, don’t think of it as needing to make one 4” wide x 4” thick board that you’ll cut into slices. That’s great for simple stuff, but not for this. Instead, picture different wood species glued together to make multiple thin wood panels. Maybe some of the thin panels have alternating walnut rectangles and maple squares. The other panels are solid maple. Glue them together in layers and shift each panel slightly to the left or right. This results in a pretty nice brick pattern. Not bad once we break down step by step.
Thin wood panels
Wood brick pattern
Patterns like this usually do not involve gluing the panels together into a large block. These projects can require slicing each panel on its own, standing the pieces upright, and then gluing them together to create the final work of art.
What pattern do you make?
Start your project by identifying the pattern you want to make. Look at the elements of the design and imagine the colors are different wood blocks. Determine if there are patterns within the pattern. In essence, break it down to its most basic elements. By doing this, you can come up with a build process to make these small patterns. You may find that a pattern looked really complicated at first, but really it’s just four rows consisting of squares. Make each row, and then glue them together. the Next thing you know, you’ve got some pretty cool coasters!
Overall geometric pattern
Close up of the pattern
Identifying patterns within patterns
You may ask, “what about the quadrant lines in the original pattern and how do I make those? Well, there’s nothing that stops you from making something, destroying it, and reassembling it into something way better! After gluing together those rows that form the pattern, you can cut the entire thing into four quadrants. Glue the quadrants back together by inserting thin pieces of light-colored wood (matching the center square) where the black lines are in the pattern.
Plaid End Grain Coasters
Now that you have a grasp on how project patterns can be obtained, check out these plaid end grain coasters and see if you can figure out how they were created. It’s pretty crazy that you can make an insane pattern like this completely out of lumber and scrap wood.
Digital mockup of plaid coasters
Finished plaid coasters
If you want to push your skills, check out my plaid end grain coaster plans. They walk you through the entire build process, resulting in this crazy looking design. I recommend making extras. Your friends and family will absolutely want to steal yours once they see them!
