This little adventure was full of many firsts. A coworker approached me after seeing a few of the other cutting boards I’d made and asked if I could do one for him. Sure! You want it a little more custom? Ok- I do custom work! Carve the state you’re from into the top of the board?…. oook…. I think I could figure that out. Where are you from? Michigan? Are you sure you weren’t born in Colorado or Wyoming?
Suffice to say, I was up for the challenge… but it was quite a challenge. My first thought was to just go slow and chisel out the whole shape start to finish and then route out the middle. That clearly wasn’t going to work.
So I then moved to getting a router template guide which was a godsend, but had a learning curve. Also when flush trimming I had a piece chip off and that ended up being a fatal flaw which lead to me attempting to re-route out the shape and put a new piece in. But then my template slipped and lead to this mess.
Due to the way the template and the guide bushing interact I couldn’t see what I was doing until the whole thing slipped and I FELT IT. As you can see it was pretty much FUBAR from the beginning.
So that lead to cutting the whole top off and redoing it from scratch. And even then I ended up with a few small gaps. But my customer should be thrilled and I’ve learned not to point out flaws to those with money.
The final product turned out well, but even then while oiling it I had a small issue. My cat decided to start licking it and his tongue was just rough enough to cause me to need to resand and oil the back again.
Scraps and Cutoffs 