Charcuterie Board 1

I had some scrap pieces leftover hanging out around the shop and I had a bit of free time, so I figured I would put together something for the etsy shop. This is made of cherry and walnut. I had some cherry that was long enough to cut in half. Then I found a few narrow cutoffs of walnut to provide some color contrast. I think the end result is pretty cool

Rough cut/glue up

the bottom

Tried to cut a rabbet into the edge - didn't go so well

I needed some weight to attach those risers

I started out by making the cherry pieces exactly the same. Have to be a mirror image for this setup to work. I used a can of spraypaint to get the curve marked for the corners and cut them out on the bandsaw. Then setup a rabbet bit in the router table for exactly half of the thickness of both pieces. Of course they weren't exactly the same thickness, but it wasn't off by more than a millimeter or so. When you route out half of the thickness of the outside pieces and take the same rabbet depth on each side of the middle piece the top has to be flush. it's math. Also, I used a small radius roundover bit to put an edge on the top.

Plus adding the rabbets gives you a ton of glue surface. I also sanded some walnut risers to get the board off of the counter a bit. If you have a level countertop and the risers are the same thickness then you will end up with a level board that is easy to pick up! I also routed the rabbet over the ends - there was some damage to the bottom of the boards that I needed to hide so putting that lip on the ends cleaned it up nicely. I had to use a fence on the router table to keep the rabbet even.

Starting to finish

So this guy is up for sale on the Etsy store. I looked through the first 20 pages of listings and couldn't find my own product, this category is pretty competitive. I finished the board with food safe finishes, again going through the entire rotation of sanding grits (80, 120, 180, 220, 320) before putting 5 coats of tung oil on the bottom, and 4 coats on the top followed by 3 coats of butcher block conditioning wax + oil. The finish is food safe, cherry isn't particularly hard but you can use a knife on this board. More than likely the purchaser (or gift recipient or my wife) will just use it as a serving tray. Load this bad boy up with meats & cheeses, or fruit, or even sushi.

This was a really fun project. It only took a few hours to pull the woodworking together, and longer for the finish to cure. I'm really looking forward to playing around more with edge joinery and making some more of these type of boards.