Cutting Boards

Another birthday coming up, this time my mom’s. I thought I’d try my hand at a houndstooth board. It’s a classic pattern and moderately challenging. The board is made up of only three different square “blocks”. Two are separate species of solid wood, but the challenging one is a laminate of four layers formed into a square. The challenge is cutting a smaller square out of the larger profile rotated 45 degrees from the original square profile. You’ll see what I mean when we get into it.

My brother is a musician, and his birthday was fast approaching, so I decided to try my hand at an end grain cutting board with a keyboard theme. This was a first for me, so I thought… how hard could it be? A couple YouTube videos and I had the gist of how to build one. I did read somewhere about some dimension issues, so I was careful to lay it out before cutting any wood. Keep reading to see how I made it.

Who doesn’t love an ice cream sandwich? Making this cutting board reminds me of ice cream sandwiches. Why? The basic pattern for this board is made up of blocks that look like one. There are only three shapes in this board which are easy to make, but don’t let that fool you. The fast-paced glue-up more than makes up for it.

I was studying the basket weave tile pattern on my shower floor one day and thought it would make an interesting cutting board. The pattern is simple,  yet it had a subtle three dimensional feel. It looked easy, so I gave it a shot. Here’s how: