In response to paul_ma, I dont need your benefit of the doubt, but thanks for offering. Im here answering/asking questions just like anyone else. I answer questions in many forums in the realm of my profession unlike you I see. Skilled woodworker are you? How long have you been building butcher blocks? Yes the volume is always the same, blah blah, but thats not what its about at all. Its about usable material. There is always more usable edge-grain than end-grain. Its the yield that matters (for you engineer types). The waist factor for end-grain tops is around 30-40% but im sure you knew that too. As for our website we simply do not list end-grain countertops because they simply are not a big seller. We list standard edge-grain tops. End-grain is not standard and is typically ordered by the rich and famous who have no real applicational use for it anyway. Although I personally prefer the look of end-grain over edge grain its just not practical or cost beneficial for use in the countertop application. Why would anyone want to chop heavily on a $3000-$4000 end-grain countertop. Oh wait your only gonna cut on it.lol, then buy a chopping block or a cutting board and save a couple grand. If your simply buying an end-grain countertop for looks than good for you but dont complain about the price when you do. Either way at some point whether its end-grain or edge-grain it does not matter as both tops will need to be serviced after time. Why the comparison between granite and butcher block anyway? Does anyone sit here and mill around about the price of plastic laminate vs. granite or anything else for that matter. It is what is. When it comes to countertops just buy what you like. Nobody ever concerns themselves with cutting directly on granite tops or Laminate tops as we all know you just dont do it. With hardwood countertops its a plus. Does it scratch? Yes. They all do, but its the fact that it is safe to cut on and easily repairable that makes the difference.

Hi donna214; Thank you for your nice words about our countertop. I really love it! I'm so glad you looked at mamadadapaige's island and I'm so glad that's what you have a sample of. Small world! And isn't it pretty? Wow -- ours was already in place when I saw hers but I'll tell you, if I had seen it before I might have gone a different direction .... Well, I haven't noticed any scratches and I did just go and really look. No knife marks, no scratches. But I'll tell you what we do have: some stains. And I believe these are my fault: I should've applied "butter" (what I call the beeswax mixture I rub into it) twice a week for the first month or two. Instead I did it much less often, because I didn't know better! Live and learn. Anyway, the stains we have (so they're from the first two months we had the countertop -- actually, they're all from the same weekend as it was my sons' birthdays and we had a big, festive [aka boozy] party) are from the bottom of a ceramic pitcher which held iced tea (so I think some iced tea got spilled and sat under the bottom of the container on the countertop), a large number of juicy cut strawberries (cut on the countertop) which sat there for maybe ten minutes, and some tomato sauce (from where we cut pizza right on the countertop and no one wiped it up right away -- it sat for quite a while). Since then, I've been better about applying butter (I did it twice a week for a month and now I do it every three - four weeks or so) and I can see how it repels things. Tonight, my super-messy husband (doesn't believe in wiping up spills, EVER! -- ask me how we're still married) was making a sauce out of shoyu and, naturally, it was glopped all over the place. I had my hands full of little boy (my two year-old) so didn't grab the sponge right away and instead saw the shoyu just sit there as a glob, not being absorbed by the countertop. And for lunch today my four year-old and I made pizza, with tomato sauce (again) glopped on the counter. I don't make a deal out of messes in front of the children because that's not what I want them to learn (I don't want my legacy to be "mum with sponge in hand, freaking about spill"). Anyway, so it wasn't until a bit later (maybe fifteen - twenty minutes?) that I wiped that up and again, you'd never know it. Oh yes, we cut that pizza directly on the countertop as well! Let me caveat this with the fact that I live in a v. dry climate (Rocky Mountains) -- our air is thin and dry. I mean DRY! So wood really, really is affected (just as it would be in a humid environment) and sucks any- and everything up. If I lived in a more "normal" climate I would not have had to be as obsessive about buttering it. (and as I've already demonstrated, I wasn't so obsessive!) the reddish marks are the stains

I have an thick end-grain square butcherblock that sits next to the sink and is the non-meat cutting/chopping worksurface we use on an almost daily basis. It gets wiped off several times and then gets a more vigorous cleaning at the end. I have another thinner board I use for cutting meat that is easier to scrub clean in the sink. When I first got the block I drenched it in pure tung oil thinned with citrus solvent. Let it soak in. Put more on. Repeat, repeat. Let it dry until it didn't smell. What happens over time is that the center area where I work the most starts to look "dry" like untreated wood. There's enough tung oil in it that I don't worry about it drying out or splitting but aesthetically it looks like a well-used block. Maybe twice a year I apply a coat of thinned tung oil over the whole thing to keep it sealed. I much prefer the soaked-in protection that the tung oil gives than the surface protection that frequently-applied mineral oil does. So to me there are two considerations: how well sealed is it to protect it from splitting and how does it look. The tung oil will give the best long-term protection but if you use it it will look used. If you want it to look "wet", then mineral oil and/or wax will give that look on the surface.

I have teak countertops in my kitchen. Done out of 8/4 planks, edge glued. I used biscuits and West System epoxy. I wiped the plank edges down with acetone just prior to assembly. The run of countertop as a whole is 30" deep by roughly 18' long, it's two separate pieces that overlap on the ends, one about 12' long, the other about 6' long. The overlap is because one countertop is a couple inches lower than the other one. I have an under mount kitchen sink, so the end grain of the planks is exposed to water at the sink. Zero damage. Been in for almost 20 years. No warping, lifting, curling, no separation at all on the glue lines. Finished with mineral oil. The oil holds up well, I try to renew the oil once or maybe twice a year, though I have gone several years without renewing it. I have another teak end-grain butcher block cutting surface as a kitchen island end cap. Roughly 4' square with one corner clipped on a 45, and 5" or so thick. The individual blocks are about 3-1/2" by 2" and assembled in a running bond pattern. Same assembly; I wiped the blocks down with acetone, then epoxied. No biscuits on that one. We do cut on it some, not a lot, but the cutting surface has held up perfectly. On the side or edge of the block, there's one break on a glue line, where the grain orientation of the two blocks don't remotely match up due to one of the blocks having wild running grain. The break isn't noticeable to the eye, but you can feel it when you run your fingertip along the edge. There's maybe a 1/32" lippage at that joint. Just enough to catch a fingernail on if you run it along the side of the slab. I've never bothered to sand it flush. Great material for a countertop. Been used and abused in a heavily used kitchen, and they still look pretty darn bueno.