Orig­i­nal­ly Post­ed: July 6, 2021
Updat­ed: Feb­ru­ary 25, 2023

Maple, Walnut, Cherry

It sounds like a dessert ice cream.

I love to cook, as you can see from my Insta­gram pro­file and the new Cui­sine sec­tion on this web­site.  Over the years, I have had var­i­ous store-bought cut­ting boards, most of which have worked rea­son­ably well.

How­ev­er, they all suf­fered from var­i­ous issues (lack of sta­bil­i­ty, dura­bil­i­ty, warp­ing due to poor man­u­fac­tur­ing, etc.).  This year my boards were get­ting to a point where they need­ed to be replaced, and thus it was a per­fect time to design and man­u­fac­ture a cus­tom board.

Design Requirements

A few of my require­ments for the new design:

• The var­i­ous boards were nev­er big enough (16x16, 16x20, 8x10, etc.) — it had to be larg­er, much more promi­nent on the kitchen island.
• I want­ed to move to an edge grain style board for my pri­ma­ry board for dura­bil­i­ty and rock-sol­id stability.
• I have want­ed to make a cus­tom board for years (I am a hob­by­ist woodworker)
• I want­ed to source Cana­di­an woods only.
• The board had to fea­ture a unique design both in struc­ture and in colour; how­ev­er, I want­ed to use woods that were: 
  • not tox­ic
  • less than or rough­ly 1200 on the Jan­ka Hard­ness scale (my Japan­ese knives made from Aoga­mi Super (Super Blue car­bon) Steel clad with Stain­less Steel are brit­tle under cer­tain con­di­tions on hard sur­faces) — they have a Rock­well Hard­ness of 63:64 !
• With wood prices soar­ing in 2020/2021, many hand­made boards can be ultra-expen­sive, and noth­ing I found on the web were the dimen­sions I was look­ing at.

Hence it was time to design and man­u­fac­ture my own per­son­al­ized board.

Materials and Tools

Materials (Woods):

• Cana­di­an Walnut
• Cana­di­an Maple
• Cana­di­an Cher­ry was not avail­able, so I used a US import­ed Cherry

Materials (Other):

• Tite­bond III glue
• Sand­pa­per (80, 120, 150, 180, 220, 320 grit)
• Cut­ting board oil (Caron and Doucet Cut­ting Board Con­di­tion­ing Oil)
• Cut­ting board wax (Caron and Doucet)

Tools:

• Hand sand­ing block
• Pipe Clamps, lots of pipe clamps
• Flat work­bench
• Orbital Sander
• Router
• Router Plan­ner Sled (will post the arti­cle on how I made my cus­tom one shortly)
• Dou­ble Flute bit