How to Make a Hardwood Cutting Board

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Use two types of wood for a striped appearance.

Our little bi-color cutting board is the perfect low-stress woodworking project. If you've got a little time on your hands over the holidays and want to kick up a little sawdust in the shop, here's your project. We made our cutting board from strips of 3/4-inch white ash and mahogany. Both were scrap wood. But you could make it from pieces of walnut and maple, maple and cherry, or cherry and ash. The only woods you should avoid are softwoods like pine and cedar which are too soft and porous to make an effective cutting board.

The project is best executed with simple bench-top power tools, like a small miter saw, and a small table saw. You can sand the project by hand with a sanding block, but it goes faster with a random orbit oscillating sander. Our biggest time-saving step was to use a glue-line ripping blade when we sawed each piece of wood to width. This delivers a glue-ready edge. We show some of these supplies below and provide links to others in the story. Now let's get started.

Crosscut your workpieces to length (in this case, 14 inches) using a miter saw. Next, use a table saw to rip five pieces of ash to 1 5/16 in. wide. Rip four pieces of mahogany to 3/8 in. wide. Be sure that the saw's riving knife (the thin piece of steel shaped like a shark fin bolted behind the blade) is installed. The knife prevents the workpiece from pinching against the blade and creating a dangerous kickback. Also, given the narrow width of the workpiece, use a push stick to keep your hand away from the spinning saw blade. It's important to emphasize that to make these cuts, we used a glue-line ripping blade in the saw. This blade delivers such a cleanly-sawn edge that you can proceed to glue up without feeding the workpiece over another benchtop power tool known as a jointer. Jointers plane the edge smooth and flat. If you invest in one, you must also use a push stick or a push block to feed narrow stock like this over the cutter.

Lay out the nine wooden pieces on a sheet of waxed paper, alternating the ash and mahogany strips. Apply a bead of waterproof glue to the edges of each piece, then use an acid brush to smooth out the glue and ensure total coverage.

Bring the ends of each piece flush with its neighbor, and use three clamps to bring together the glued-up assembly. Place two clamps underneath and one on top. The waxed paper will prevent glue from dripping all over the clamps and workbench. Allow the glue to dry overnight.

Loosen the clamps and use a freshly-sharpened paint scraper or stiff-blade putty knife to remove any dried globs of glue from both sides of the cutting board. Then sand the board smooth with a random-orbit sander. Start with a 100-grit abrasive disk and progressively work through finer and finer abrasives (120, 150, 180 grits) up to 220 grit. Vacuum the cutting board surface clean after each grit and wipe it with a tack cloth to remove sanding dust and grit before proceeding to the next level of grit.

There are a variety of specialty finishes to use on cutting boards. My favorite finish, however, is food grade mineral oil. You can buy it at most grocery stores and in pharmacies. Simply rub it in with a clean, lint-free cotton cloth.

As time passes, the board will likely accumulate scratches and knife marks. A couple of passes with a random orbit sander and some 220 grit paper, followed by a wipe down and three applications of mineral oil are all it takes to keep the board looking great for years to come.

Joe is a former carpenter and cabinetmaker who writes extensively about remodeling, woodworking, and tool techniques. He has written eight books and is a contributing editor to Popular Mechanics. He also appears on the Today's Homeowner TV show, and co-hosts the weekly Today's Homeowner Radio Show. Joe writes from his home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

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