Arti­cles relat­ing to wood working

42“x18“x1.5″ Custom Cutting Board — Edge Grain


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

The final result

As the image below show, the wood was ultra smooth, near per­fect­ly glued togeth­er and the final oil and wax process real­ly brought out the grain in all of the woods.

Final thoughts

Design­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing the board was around 8 hours of work and required sev­er­al cus­tom tools & jigs to be manufactured.

That said, the result speaks for itself, and the board is a unique piece of art as much as it is a rock-sol­id surface!

I have been using the board mul­ti­ple times dai­ly for near­ly four months now, and it’s so sol­id that my knives cut dra­mat­i­cal­ly bet­ter on it.  It should last for years with con­tin­ued main­te­nance — the only real issue with it is the weight and size of the phys­i­cal board, as it makes it dif­fi­cult to give it a good wash in the dou­ble sink.

The real ques­tion now that friends are asking:

Will you go into mak­ing boards and sell them ?

Hon­est­ly, I am con­sid­er­ing the idea more and more.


| Arti­cle post­ed in: Bit­stream,Wood Work­ing || Tagged as: , , |