Replies

1. 
   ysu65 | Jul 11, 2023 06:54am | #1

   Make a sample and test it. A cutting board will have contact with a hopefully sharp knife. They will get dinged up. Since I cook a bit, I could never take a knife to one of those beautiful fancy cutting boards and damage it. I get a cheap bamboo one for Walmart, have no remorse using it. That said I was at a craft fair over the weekend with a bunch of boards made from my leftover stuff, mostly walnut and composite units. Folks kept saying, "Very nice cutting boards." I told them that walnut is not that hard and will get marked up pretty quickly, these are cheese (charcuterie) boards. I have some leftover hard maple that would work well but I did not make any. The composite boards used lengths of hard and soft maple, walnut, ash, hickory, redwood, hemlock, ambrosia maple, spalted mystery wood, and hop hornbeam. As mentioned the goal was to reduce scrap clutter but I swear there is more stuff laying around now than before I started.

2. 
   jharveyb | Jul 11, 2023 10:06am | #2

   For sanitation reasons, it is recommended not to use open pore woods (hickory, oak, ash, even walnut) in cutting boards, as food can get trapped in the pores. They also recommend using a single board rather than the glued up strips, as the joints tend to open up from the constant wetting and drying. Best to find another use for the hickory.

3. 
   pantalones868 | Jul 11, 2023 01:33pm | #3

   I'm not a big fan of water based finishes but I made some drawer boxes out of hickory once. I decided to use a water based finish to finish them. Don't know,cause I had some? ,or it seemed easy at the time. The result was that I ended up with pretty extreme lifted grain that required a great deal of work to make right. I would think that a cutting board will end up in the sink quite often and I would question its ability to withstand alot of contact with water.

4. 
   ysu65 | Jul 12, 2023 06:35am | #4

   My charcuterie board is hickory, cutting boards are bamboo and plastic from Walmart. I never soak any in the sink, just wipe them down after. When I cut up chicken, fish, etc, I use the plastic board and clean with soap. The hickory board was finished as follows: Sand to 220, light water spray, resand with 220 when dry. Applied mineral oil, let soak in for a while then wipe excess. Final treatment was butcher block wax/oil, then wiped clean. No raised grain or any other issues after three years use, minor touch up. Anything soaked in the sink should be plastic.

5. 
   pantalones868 | Jul 12, 2023 06:00pm | #5

   Nothing should be plastic!