Nicole and Danny by Katie Hill
My sister-in-law got married this summer to a total rock star. I am so happy for them. I wanted to give her something meaningful but practical so I made a cool cutting board with scrap wood in the shop. To incorporate both of them, and their life ahead, I found wood from where they both grew up and their future. Her family is from California, her fiance is from Washington and they now live in DC. So… walnut from Cali, a beautiful maple from Washington, and an oak wood from the east coast.
Warning: this is super cheesy, but you gotta know when it comes to weddings or kids I get really corny, really fast. The card read, “May your marriage be as strong as oak, as sweet as maple and as beautiful as walnut.” I think she liked it.
(I also really want her to have babies, so included a few other gifts for fun.)
Steps to a cutting board with a random design:
1. Gather your wood, about the same length is great and height is helpful (or cut it down to that), width doesn’t matter
2. Plane or cut a straight edge (needed to glue together securely), then cut your wood into strips with a table saw, whatever width you’d like
3. Arrange your pattern. Mine is pretty random.
4. Glue the wood on the inside, then brace. It’ll be wacky all around and that’s okay. What you need at this stage are straight cuts being glued together. The top, bottom and edges don’t matter yet. I actually had two clamps on the bottom and one on the top so it didn’t bow.
5. Once dry, send the board through the planer until both top and bottom are the same height
6. The cut to size. If you want a gutter on the edge for liquid or juices, use a router
7. Sand, sand, sand
8. Clean and coat with mineral oil and enjoy!
Happy Creating!
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