Offcuts to Cutting Board

[Pat Barry]

I had the offcuts from my laminated Ash workbench top laying around the shop since last winter collecting dust. I had been thinking about making an end grain cutting board from them but was concerned about how to flatten the whole thing once I got it glued together. I ended up diving in and then running it thru the 13" Rigid planer, taking very light cuts and flipping it over frequently. Happy to find that I got no tear out to speak of on the edges, although I did cut it to final size (12 1/4 x 11 1/14 x 1" thick) after flattening and cleaned up the sides in the process. I then routed some finger grooves in all four sides with the 1" round nose bit I got on sale from Rockwell last year and did successive sanding with my Dewalt ROS at 150 and 220 grit and then used the mineral oil paraffin wax combo to seal it all up. I had no plan for the pattern when I started and I'm pretty happy how it turned out. My wife asked me if she could use it. I'm hoping she is happy with it for a long time.

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[Todd Burch]

Looks good Pat!

[Marshall Border]

I think it will work out fine , pretty ..................MB

[Pat Barry]

Thank you for the kind feedback guys.

One thing I should note - not sure this would happen with Maple, but with the Ash when I applied the mineral oil concoction on the top and then flipped it over, the mineral oil had already bled thru to the back side in various places. I know there has been discussion about the choice of Ash for cutting boards, but my research did indicate that the porosity isn't a big problem if if enough drying time is allowed between cutting chicken (for example) and then cutting something else. Within 24 hours all the wood cutting boards were rated equally. The people doing the testing had huge concerns about plastic cutting boards however. Anyway, this one will not likely be used for chicken preparation.