If you do a lot of woodworking and hate wasting scrap material, this is a great project for you. This cutting board can be made out of any scrap hardwood, and no matter what it looks beautiful and is always unique. Also, since you already paid for the wood and assumed you'd be wasting some, this cutting board is basically free!
I made this one as a christmas present for my mom, it's made out of scrap pieces of bubinga, lacewood, cherry, maple, and walnut from previous wood projects (some of which are on Instructables like our kitchen table and my bubinga desk).
The details are in the photos above, but I'll outline the basic process here:
Collect your wood and layout the pattern. Make sure all sides are cut straight or planed so the glue joints will be tight.
Glue the wood together and clamp. When it's dry, plane or sand so the seams are flat. Then make all your interesting cuts, and glue back together. Then sand all the seams down again, sand with progressively higher grits, then finish with either a food-grade finish (like "good stuff", which is basically Salad Bowl finish) or a cutting board oil.
I made this one as a christmas present for my mom, it's made out of scrap pieces of bubinga, lacewood, cherry, maple, and walnut from previous wood projects (some of which are on Instructables like our kitchen table and my bubinga desk).
The details are in the photos above, but I'll outline the basic process here:
Collect your wood and layout the pattern. Make sure all sides are cut straight or planed so the glue joints will be tight.
Glue the wood together and clamp. When it's dry, plane or sand so the seams are flat. Then make all your interesting cuts, and glue back together. Then sand all the seams down again, sand with progressively higher grits, then finish with either a food-grade finish (like "good stuff", which is basically Salad Bowl finish) or a cutting board oil.
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I'd like to learn more about the glue, and how it stands up to washing. I've little faith in glue by lengthy experience (I'm 61), yet I see glues being used industrially on such as TV's "How It's Made", but my experience with glue is that it doesn't work. Everything I've ever owned that was glued fell apart very quickly. I have a wooden mortar and pestle. The bowl has opened at the glued seams. Shoes with glued parts fall apart. Cutting boards made of separate pieces last no time, and split along glued lines. Glue, for me, never works/has never worked. It is only a temporary thing. Do any glues actually work and last?
I'd like to see an Instructable that dealt only with glue - UK and US, which named those glues that work, and those that don't. The only cutting board that lasted more than a few weeks was a single piece of mahogany I was lucky enough to come across, and that buckled after a few washes, but remained solid. Do glues work for you? For how long? Is any glue waterproof? All glues fail, in my experience, and sooner rather than later. I'm in the UK, so US brands will be meaningless, as in this instructible. If you don't know the UK equivalent, please don't reply, it's just frustrating. Beautiful board, though.
I once had a wood expansion problem that locked two moving parts together. I was trying to ease them apart with a clamp when suddenly a huge crack formed...in the wood. Glue bond (where most of the stress was) was totally fine.
http://www.titebond.com/product.aspx?id=e8d40b45-0ab3-49f7-8a9c-b53970f736af
If you glue two well-surfaced pieces of wood together with this stuff, the wood will break before the glue seam does (I've tested this).
Hopefully you can find a place online to buy this stuff or something like it.
You really should be congratulated!
I'd like to do a job like that here in Brazil, because there is a wide variety of wood types.
Daniel Domingos
Thanks! :)