I’ve got to tell you that Butcher/Chopping blocks always make great gifts, especially when they’re from Timber Craft. 😀 (Sorry but I had to throw in a plug while I had your attention!)
More to the point…I began this journey one Saturday night long ago, with a few leftover scraps of hardwood and an assortment of half-empty glue bottles. In my mind it wasn’t a well defined mission with a gold engraved business plan. It wasn’t really even a goal oriented exercise. In fact, to be quite honest, it was a mix of curiosity and boredom. I had seen some really beautiful cutting boards in an airport gift shop somewhere and thought to myself, “You know, it shouldn’t be that difficult to make one of those.” And that’s how it all started…some scrap hardwood and a desire to make something tangible for my Mom, as a thank you for keeping my Jack Russell terrier while I was frequently away on business travel.
That evening I spent a few minutes going through the scrap pile and came up with a nice assortment of pieces that were just the right size for making a small/medium sized cutting board. After gluing it all up and allowing it to dry for 24 hours, it looked somewhat less than spectacular…
Even with less than stellar results, I decided to go ahead and finish it just to see what happened. The next day I arrived at the shop and seeing that the glue was dry, slowly relieved the tension on the pipe clamps. When I flipped the block over the backside was completely covered in dried glue that had squeezed out from between each slat. After spending at least an hour scraping off the dried glue with half a dozen different tools, I ran the block through my planer a few times to even out the top and bottom surfaces. A disc sander took care of all the edges in short order. But even though every surface was smooth, the board just didn’t come close to those I had seen.
I grabbed my iPad and did some quick research, finding that most board makers recommended soaking their boards in mineral oil. I didn’t have much faith that this was going to look any better, but what could it hurt? I had a gallon of mineral oil that I had been saving to use with another project, so I poured some onto a white terrycloth towel and began applying it liberally to the board. What I saw before my eyes was a transformation nothing short of an absolute miracle. The colors simply exploded into a vibrant array of beauty…
I immediately found a container, filled it with Mineral oil, and tossed in the board, this time allowing it to soak for an hour or two. When done, I retrieved the board from the container, wiped it down, locked up the shop and headed to the house. The expression on my mother’s face when I pulled that cutting board out of my bag was something I hadn’t seen in years.
Well it didn’t take long before the word spread throughout the circle of family and friends. Everyone had to have one. So I made a few more…
and a few more after that….
and then I began experimenting with end grain boards and some really tricky geometry…
and even some boards with curved inlays…
and there are SO MANY boards that I’ve not even included in this story. But if I showed you all of them, we would be here for a week. Ok so one more…this photo taken by a customer who got one of our boards as a wedding gift:
So let’s just say that Timber Craft does cutting boards in all shapes, sizes and material combinations. And if you find a design somewhere that you really like, AND you can get a photo or write up a description accurate enough for us to follow, we can build or design any cutting board layout that you want –from simple to 3 dimensional, we can do it. Just let us know what you want and we will make it happen.
-David
PS- Here are a few of the latest, arranged in a gallery slideshow. Enjoy!
