I had lots of leftovers from previous projects and decided I’d try to make the biggest cutting board from the tiny leftovers I had.
I do not have a jointer or planer so this turned out to be quite the challenge as not a single piece was the same dimension or square… You can see by the picture here all the gaps in between due to the difference in thickness.
I had cut as many pieces as i could from the scraps i gathered and laid them out to make the biggest board i could make while also trying to keep an eye on the pattern.
I glued the up lengthwise first just using some tape. Since all the pieces differed in dimension, it wasn’t possible to use the clamping board in the picture here.
Once glued, there was a slight bow to all the pieces. I figured i’d solve that problem once it was getting in my way 😇
I used my router table to create a makeshift jointer. I use 0.5mm thick offcut as the outfeed and aligned that with the router bit. This way I could get the side to be perpendicular with the bottom.
The router bit was just slightly too short to take off the material, so i just followed up with a chisel to clean them up.
I forgot to take some pictures, most likely due to my frustrations of the pieces not being square enough to each other that there were gaps between the pieces that were too large for my liking… 😅 In any case… I used the power of bar clamps to smush them together and deal with the bowing/twist of the board when I flattened the piece.
Using router sled to flatten one side of the board first. I used some shims to avoid the piece from rocking while I was flattening it.
The other side was easier and after became perfectly flat 😊
I added some chamfers to the top and bottom edges, added some grooves to the side to act as grips so the board is easy to pick up from a flat table. Sanded from 80 > 120 > 180 on all sides.
Used a bottle of cutting board oil to soak it. The walnut was extremely thirsty so i just let it soak for a bit and kept adding oil until it was pretty much saturated.
Left it overnight to dry and ended up looking like this! The board is 25 x 18 cm so it’s perfect for cutting up some fruits or using it as a serving board with cheeses and whatnot. Great little project and if i’d do a cutting board again, I’d suggest milling all the pieces to the right dimension beforehand if that’s possible!
