Maple / Black Walnut Edge Grain Cutting Board

[Travis Bochenek]

This was my smallest project yet but i had alot of fun. I finally purchased a thickness planer and thought this was a good project to test it out on. Headed over to Highland Hardwoods and grabbed some Black Walnut and Hard Maple. I don't have a table saw so I used my Festool MFT/3 table and tracksaw to rip everything down to size. It was easy enough but made me yearn for a tablesaw .

Glue up and everything else was a breeze compared to the 10ft long cherry bartop I did and 5x4ft Sipo tabletop. I made the decision to go with General Finishes Salad Bowl finish on this. Man there are a ton of opinions on finish, sheesh my head was spinning. This was my "toe dip" into cutting boards. Next will be an end grain beast.

Final dimensions are 22.5" x 12" x 1.25"

Finished Product



Ready for that sticky icky


Trimming the end

[Jim Becker]

That's a beautiful board! The way you setup the contrast in a "non regular" way makes it interesting to look at. It draws the eye.

The Global santoku is worthy, too...I have an identical one in my drawer, although I prefer the nakiri format for most work. (I have a Zhen for that)

[Travis Bochenek]

That's a beautiful board! The way you setup the contrast in a "non regular" way makes it interesting to look at. It draws the eye.

The Global santoku is worthy, too...I have an identical one in my drawer, although I prefer the nakiri format for most work. (I have a Zhen for that)

Thanks Jim!! I spent more time than I'd like to admit looking at pictures of cutting boards to come up with the design. I can be such a dork some times. When I looked at it after I wondered if I was drawn to this design due to my love of snowmobiling. It looks JUST like snowmobile tracks. Thinking of the peewee herman movie scene where he says "I meant to do that."

Haha, love that your a knife geek, I guess there's probably quite a few on here. I love my globals and you know, I def need a Nakiri. I bought a chef's knife from Global too but it's almost the same as the Santoku. Damn, now I need to make some boards to sell and use that as justification to buy that knife. This was also my first time using a roundover bit. I've just eased the edges in the past with sandpaper but using the roundover just makes it look that much better. May try a bevel on the next one to change it up. Thank god there's a Rockler store 10 minutes away.

[Jim Becker]

While it remains slightly off-topic, I'm loving my Zwilling Pro knives better than the Globals...I've had a hard time keeping an edge on the latter and the former "just plain stays sharp". Don't get me wrong...the Global knifes are really nice, but I don't know if it's "family use" that keeps degrading the edges quickly, or just that it's SS. The Nakiri was from a Woodcraft kit...I just had to handle it. It also stays sharp and the really thin blade is a dream to work with. I recently built a 10" bread knife from a similar kit to replace an old, cheapo one.

[Ron Citerone]

Looks real nice! I like the Salad bowl finish too.

[Julie Moriarty]

The cutting board is beautiful, Travis! Really creative way to orient the different woods. It's a nice change from what we normally see and really makes it stand out.