Make a Contrasting Color Cutting Board

This is a really fun project because in the end it looks complicated but it's really really simple to pull this off the project being we're gonna take a bunch of different species of wood and we're gonna glue them, cut them, do some cool stuff and end up with these complementary boards. That look Like this bunch of stuff going on here. These could be cutting boards when you're done. These could be serving trays when you're done, just in general for your woodworking, knowing about the technique I'm about to teach you is a really cool thing to incorporate into other projects. So here's what we've got going the finished ones are maple, cherry, walnut, and if you look at this closely.

You might figure out that walnut and that walnut and that walnut were all together as one board at one time just like the maple and the cherry was here's how we get here. What I did before you got here. Was I made up these boards made up being I cut the parts. I glued them together with tight bond 3 because where I'm going with this is a cutting board. Tight bond 3 is a great choice for a cutting board.

It's waterproof. It's FDA approved, got a lot of positive attributes for cutting boards. So after the glue was dry, sent them through my planer and I flattened them. And I cut them all to the same size. Next step is double face tape.

And we're gonna make a big hardwood sandmate here material selection because I'm going toward a cutting board. I'm using hardwoods that lend themselves to being cutting boards, so again, cherry, maple, walnut, those are great choices for a cutting board. As you stack these. They're all the same size right now. Work on keeping the edges.

And the ends reasonably aligned. And that's gonna pay off when we get a couple steps down the road. And then squish them. On the material prep side, we've got some other parts here when you look at the completed boards. In between the walnut and the cherry, there's a maple stripe.

And in between the cherry and the maple there's a walnut stripe. So the other things I've made are these thin strips. They're under 1/8 of an inch right now. The specific thickness doesn't matter, but it needs to be able to conform to the curve that we're about to bandsaw cut. So as you're making these, take some of the off cuts and make these so that we can use those as gaskets in a little bit from here we're gonna head over to the bandsaw and do some cutting.

The boards that I prep for my project are 1 inch thick. 10 inches wide, 20 inches long, that's virtually the final length of the cutting board that we're gonna get. It's gonna change just a tiny bit, but keep that in mind as you're prepping your material here at the bandsaw. I have got a 1/4 inch 4 tooth per inch blade in the saw. We need to have fairly aggressive teeth because we're cutting some pretty thick hardwood here.

But we don't wanna get too aggressive. We won't wanna be like a 2 or 3 TPI because we don't want the bandsaw marks to be huge. 1/4 inch width works great because we're gonna cut some curves and we wanna be able to flow through those curves. Here's your mission at the bandsaw. We're gonna create.

Curves in our material of some kind. What's nice, what's gonna make the clamping step easier is if you have some concave to this. If all you do is something like. This when we go to clamp that those parts act like a wedge and they slip past each other so keep in mind as you're cutting that we want to have a little bit of a negative profile here. The goal with this is to go from the bandsaw to the gluing step without any sanding.

So as you're cutting. Work on flowing from one end of the stack to the other without a lot of stopping and starting and stopping and starting because that's gonna telegraph into bigger bandsaw marks you'll see the gasket material that I just talked about does make the gluing pretty darn seamless even without any sanding, but we don't want to have any distinct ridges in here if we can avoid it. And from here we can head back to the bench and look at gluing our boards up. When you get back to the bench, take all the layers apart, remove all the double face tape. To make up the boards, the way this will work is we're gonna mix and match the three species.

So for instance, a maple from an end. Perhaps a cherry. From a middle And then a walnut from an end and what's cool about this is because we cut them all in a stack they all play nice together the shapes are all the same remember that from the 4 TPI bandsaw blade. You don't wanna do any sanding because what's gonna happen if you sand these is they're never gonna get that shape sanded and material removal exactly the same as that one all the way across the board so we wanna come from the band saw straight to assembly. That's why you wanna be real smooth with those cuts.

The key to helping this look a little more better is we put in this gasket material so between a walnut and a cherry I wanna use a maple between a cherry and a maple. I want to use a walnut. I'm back to type on 3 for this, for all the reasons I talked about before. So one of the things to watch for. Is keeping the end grain aligned.

All three of these pieces were the same length when we started. So if the end grain is aligned, the curves have to be laying in the right spot relative to each other. Also make sure that your gaskets are all the way down. And then close a little close a little. Uh That's that and then do the same thing to the remaining material and that's how we end up with 3 of these.

We'll let this glue dry and then uh see what they look like when they come out of the clamps. Always a fun moment when you get to open up the clamps and look at what you got. I love how these boards look and I've shown them to a couple of friends of mine. And one of the things we've talked about is different ways to. Use them so that people can see the way they complement each other.

You kinda wanna give one person all three boards because of the way that the colors work together. The boards need a few more steps. Some planing, some sanding, some cutting to length. So let's take them through that process and we'll get to where we can put oil on them. One of the best parts of a project, hitting it with finish so that you start to see the wood pop.

This walnut maple cherry grain is great. And one of the things that I hope you take away from this is that if you follow that recipe of 1/4 inch blade in the bandsaw, 4 teeth per inch, nice flowing curves as you make the cuts, then use alternating species in order to add to the gasket in those curves. Boy does that work nice. And now that these are cleaned up and I'm putting finish on the seams between those parts look absolutely amazing. Type on 3 for the win, putting these together anytime you're making cutting boards, that's such a great choice.

So I hope you try this. And incorporate this concept. And some projects in your shop.