Function
- A cutting board shout be easy on knives but at the same time hard and well wearing
- Wood for boards should be non porous and well seasoned with a non toxic mineral oil and bees wax
- A board should be flat (sit firmly on your counter top)
- It should have sufficient mass (heavy enough to accomplish the task but be easy to move around your kitchen)
- It should be constructed from non toxic waterproof glue
Form
- A cutting/serving board should be simple, beautiful, and tactile
Care
- Cleaning can be accomplished with a dry or warm damp cloth
- Boards can also be occasionally washed with soap and warm water but not submerged and they should be re seasoned afterward
- After washing boards they should be stored carefully on edge to dry
- Boards should be dry when they are re seasoned
- Maintain seasoning with mineral oil or beeswax polish
- Regular maintenance will keep the boards looking fresh. Just a lite wiping with oil or wax
- Resurfacing can be accomplished with a red scotchbrite pad or fine steel wool
- You may wish to dedicate one side for cutting and the other for serving or display
Cheers Wayne
Recently I began an exploration into the construction of segemented end grain cutting boards(or butcher blocks). This mostly began by request of local culinary shop owner Carrie Wreford of Bradshaw's of Stratford . She challenged me to create something uniquely "Muma" and of lasting quality. I wanted to create both individually unique boards with an acceptable small scale production process. As it turned out this exploration presented artistic, technical, and process challenges. Not as easy as I expected. I also expected that I would need a small scale production thickness sander to accomplish the production time efficiently. Another noisy dusty machine to clutter up my already cramped shop. As I started experimenting with these machines a few serious shortcomings became apparent. First of all, I would need large batches of very consistently thick "board blanks" to make the process efficient. This was going to severely limit my creative process (another whole blog discussion). On top of which these blanks would still need a significant amount of random orbital sanding. Which for me defeated the idea of using a production sander in the first place. Frustrated I turned to my low angle hand planes to see if I could come up with a process to surface end grain cutting boards. I am finding huge benefits to using my #62 low angle jack plane. I am achieving a flatter surface and removing milling marks as or more time efficiently without the use of noisy dusty machines. Crazy as it sounds I will be hand smoothing my end grain cutting boards with low angle planes. The #62 low angle jack was put into production in 1905 and discontinued in 1942 until it's present day resurrection by Lie-Nielsen Tools. Please check out my cutting boards at Bradshaw's of Stratford.
