Christmas Cutting Boards

Now that Christmas is over and these all made it into the hands of their new owners, I guess I can post about this now. I tried keeping it a secret as best I could, but I dropped a couple hints in some other threads.

The lumber is all stuff that I milled - the walnut came from my sister's tree, and the maple came from one of mine. These pieces came from a few slabs I sawed early on, and that I had stored in my basement over the summer. The slabs were basically ruined for table tops, because they were not sawn or stored correctly, and they dried too fast and twisted and cracked. But I was able to salvage plenty of smaller pieces out of them.

I started by roughing out the stock around 1/4-1/2" oversize using my bandsaw and radial arm. I don't have a real jointer yet, but I can set up my router station to edge joint pieces up to 2" thick. So I used that setup to establish a square corner, and then my tablesaw and thickness planer to bring them to final dimensions. The larger pieces I took to 1.75 square, so I could rotate them if I wanted and have a few different options for the grain pattern.




Glue up:



A few of them twisted a little in the clamps, making it difficult to run them through my thickness planer and end up with a good result. So it was time for a little practice with the hand plane. Then with one side flat, I could take it back to the thickness planer and smooth out the other side.



Some finishing touches with the router. Hand holds along the edges, and a drip channel on one side for meat carving; all done with a 3/4" diameter round nose bit.

 

Here's the results. For the finish, they were soaked overnight in a bath of food-grade mineral oil, then waxed with Clarks Cutting Board finish.

 

Really nice Shawn.
Those are beefy.

 

Nice work. I like the color combination. I bet the planer was a screamin'. Made in the USA of local material. Sweet.

 

Shawn, is that a Stanley jointer plane?
Looks to be in really nice condition.

 

I thought it was at first, cause it came with (type 5?) Stanley cap and plane irons. But I ran it by some old tool experts, and they thought it was probably made by Birmingham Plane Tool co of Birmingham, CT.

Turns out its probably rarer than a Stanley of the same vintage, as they went out of business in 1900, probably due to competition from Stanley. But they're not as highly valued by the collectors.

My girlfriend got a nice deal on it on eBay and there's nothing welded or broken on it, except a small chip out of the top of the tote. I spent a few hours on the iron and probably another on the sole removing some light rust.

100+ year old tool but she's going back to work - for me. Times are tough.

 

They look awesome.

 

Those are sweet! Some real wood worker talents on show there. When my cutting board gives out I will call you for a custom job like these ones.

 

That is true craftsmanship great job

 

I made another one of these - the walnut had a bit of sapwood in it, but I'm very happy with the way it blends with the red maple.