Cutting board variation

[themachine]

I recently learned the hard way that a method for adding contrasting wood stripes in a cutting board, as posted this spring in Fine Woodworking, only works with curves of a very gentle nature. Otherwise the thin strips you use to make a laminate crack like crazy. So I used a different technique that has several advantages. It is loosely based on the routing method to create butterflies to add in panels and the excavations that perfectly match the butterflies. It involves making several templates and using them through the addition of each contrasting wood. Therefore, you can make a stripe of any thickness you want without cutting a million strips and smearing glue all over the place. You can also taper the inset strip to essentially nothing at the end of the strip (not done on my example). It is just a series of cuttings, trim routing, and regluing for as many stripes as you want to add. For this posting, I used end grain oak glued up like a butcher block. The strips are maple, cherry, and walnut. I also added a little flair on the ends by insetting walnut and routing in a finger groove. I am showing this technique on a simple cutting board, but it would work equally well and rather dramatically on a table top, for instance. I have, since the original posting, added a similar cutting board made from maple.

[gerti]

Those came out great! I like how the contrasting wood insets looks with the oak end cut pattern.

[Ed62]

Interesting technique! The results speak for themselves. Nice!!

Ed

[Tom Slick]

That looks great! Thanks for sharing.