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joshua blom

Project by

joshua blom

General Information

This is a inlaid cutting board I did for a friend. The board is maple end grain and is inlaid with walnut for the wheel and cherry for the wave and letters.

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Material Description Price
Cherry Wood

Cherry Wood

6" × 12" × 1/2" Cherry Wood

$8.86

Hard Maple

Hard Maple (×4)

6" × 12" × 3/4" Hard Maple

Walnut

Walnut

6" × 12" × 1/2" Walnut

This project's Bill of Materials is not complete.

$8.86
from Inventables

1

Prepare wood blank for cutting board base

45 minutes

First off with all of my projects is to make the blank. When I am in the process, I usually make up about a half dozen or so that way I can quickly grab some when I need them. This one happens to be 1-1/2" end grain hard maple made with 6/4 lumber.

2

Prepare multiple drawings

45 minutes

This carving was one of the most complex that I have done before so I had to do many different iterations of the drawing to get the process started. I first used Adobe Illustrator to vector out some of the designs and then imported everything into Easel for carving.

3

Carve away!

30 minutes

The most fun (and nervous) part about an inlay board so detailed is the carving in the board and ensuring that your offsets are correct. I think I did a little big here at .015 but I now know better for next time.

One tip, if you have some design or carving that can be inserted both directions, be sure to mark the top face with a pencil or something that way you don’t get them mixed up. Not like I can speak from experience or anything……. ;)

4

Glue inlays

15 minutes

I glued all of the inlays at once in this project, but in the future, I would actually cut out many different individual pieces and glue them in one by one so that I was able to have finer controls over everything.

5

Sand and finish

30 minutes

I know, this is everyone’s favorite part…..sanding. But, I am fortunate to have a drum sander that takes care of all of it in just a matter of minutes. Just a few passes through and then a touchup with the random orbital sander and presto, ready for oil.

For my finishing I have a large (60 qt?) storage tote with pure mineral oil that I dunk them in and then pour oil over another time or two for a couple days. After this has fully dried, I rub a mixture of oil and beeswax on the board to seal everything up.

After that, all that is left to do is enjoy it!