World’s Most Expensive Cutting Board

 

At long last, I wanted to document the process of building this crazy cutting board, the one purchased (in part) with the dalbergia cochinchinensis in the previous two posts. I’ve also been wanting to write about fear for about six months now, but that will have to wait.

Anyway, you might or might not recall that Lee, the customer, asked me to build the cutting board that I’d always wanted to build but had never attempted. The only other guidance he gave were the rough dimensions and the woods he wanted used. He selected bloodwood, a rare, reddish-maroon South American exotic hardwood, blackwood, a really rare, African hardwood, and Rock maple.

This is an end-grain cutting board, AKA butcher block. Making stripes in end grain wood is deceptively complex. In fact, this cutting board required 16 different glue-ups over the course of a month. The bloodwood and blackwood are so expensive that I was pretty nervous each time I made a cut. During the course of all the glue-ups and board flattening, I sanded away over 1/4″ of the thickness of the cutting board (that’s a lot of sanding). For you non-woodworkers out there, it might be better just to skim the pictures to avoid going into a coma from the wood-nerditry.

The first step for me was settling on a design. I went through a bunch of iterations on Sketchup, then brought in an artist friend and we played arts and crafts with construction paper until we got a layout we liked.

Sketchup design 2

Sketchup design 2

I’ll be honest; I’ve never made red sawdust before. Bloodwood has an unbelievable smell when it is cut… like warm cotton candy.

Image 2 Red sawdust

First, glue it up into strips…Image 3 first glue-up

Then, cross-cut those strips and clamp up…

 

Image 4 Second glue-up

Blank Canvas.

Image 5 blank canvas

 

Arts & Crafts design tweaking with April Ashton. Note the bohemian lack of footwear (hobbit feet mine, not April’s).

 

 

Image 6 finalizing the design

 

 

Lots of glue-ups for the different stripes…

 

 

 

Image 8 maple glue up

Image 7 maple glue ups

Image 9 blackwood glue ups

 

Now we start cutting up the board. Note for woodworkers: If you are going to add a 1″ wide stripe, you must remove 1″ in width from the cutting board. You can’t just make a slice through the cutting board and call it ‘good.’ If you do that, nothing will be square or line up. The easiest way to do this is to lay the actual stripe you will be using on your cutting board, and scribe lines on each side of it. This will show you what needs to be removed.

Laying out the first cut

Laying out the first cut

The boss inspecting my work

The boss inspecting my work

clamping it up

clamping it up

Note to woodworkers: clamping these angled cuts up is a complete pain in the rear. Nothing wants to stay square. You have to flush trim the edges of the stripe first, then clamp it together using cauls. You need 2-3 people to do this. Cussing optional.

 

Ready to scuba dive

Ready to scuba dive

Routing the groove for the next stripe

Routing the groove for the next strip

bandsawing it close to the line

bandsawing it close to the line

 

Image 15b smoothing the cut with a flush trim bit

Note for woodworkers: There are a couple ways to do the cut-outs for the stripes. You can route a shallow groove, then bandsaw it close to the edges of the groove, then flush trim it on the router table. Or you could use a Festool track saw with a good rip blade (this is a rip cut) if you have one. I tried it both ways, and thought the groove/bandsaw/flush trim method was more precise.

clamping

clamping

Fourth stripe

Fourth stripe

clamping the fourth stripe

clamping the fourth stripe

drum sanding again

drum sanding again

fifth stripe

fifth stripe

Image 21 Sixth stripeImage 22 fifth-sixth glue up

Lots of clamps

Lots of clamps

final stripe

final stripe

final sanding

final sanding

Cutting board in its final home in San Francisco, CA

Cutting board in its final home in San Francisco, CA

Cutting board in its final home in San Francisco, CA... sitting on a gorgeous table made of jarrah

Cutting board in its final home in San Francisco, CA… sitting on a gorgeous table made of jarrah

 

Will Work for Wood, Part 2

I didn’t realize there was going to be a Part 2 to the story, but we’ve got major wood drama! Stop the presses!

I asked a pen turner friend to make me a pen out of a chunk of cocobolo burl. When he began slicing it up, he grew suspicious and sent off a sample to a Dendrologist at an SEC university. The scientist did his thing, doing cellular analysis, burn tests, and other mystical incantations, and concluded that the wood is definitely NOT cocobolo burl. He believes it is actually dalbergia cochinchinensis, sometimes called Siamese Rosewood, Thailand Rosewood, Tracwood, or Flamewood.  It’s much harder to determine species with a piece of burl, since the grain patterns in burl are totally different than they are in traditional wood.

Will work for wood

A customer in California recently commissioned the most complex cutting board I’ve ever attempted. He said, “I know there’s a cutting board you’ve been wanting to attempt, but haven’t done it yet. Well… I want you to make that board for me.”  Turns out, he was right. There’s a cutting board I’ve been thinking about for years, now, but haven’t made it because of the level of effort required.  It will take about 20-30 separate glue-ups and probably around a month to complete.

Custom Anigre Desk

This was a really fun project and was a ‘first’ in many ways. Thus far, all of my furniture has been commissioned. This piece represents my first departure… my first speculative piece of furniture (gulp).  I absolutely love this desk and can say with a straight face that it’s the finest piece of furniture that I’ve ever made (in truth, 3 of us collaborated in making it). I hope someone else sees this and falls in love with it enough to buy it.

Curly Cherry Desk Top Build

I just finished a fun project and thought I’d give a brief narrative of the construction process. The client wanted a new desk-top that would sit atop an iron base (client provided the base). He wanted the desk-top made from a single, natural-edged slab, with highly figured wood. If I couldn’t find that, then he wanted the 3 foot X 5 foot desktop made of no more than two, book-matched boards.

Mesquite Executive Desk Build, Part 3 (Final)

Well, the desk is finished. Delivered last week, photographed (thanks, Christy!), shop purged and cleaned. Definitely bitter-sweet, as I am now done with something that occupied hundreds of hours of my life.  So, are you going to jump to the bottom to see the final pictures? Or are you going to dutifully stick with the narrative and not read ahead? Choose your own adventure, my friends.

Back to the narrative… Boxes are now out of the clamps, so it’s time to make drawer dividers.

Mesquite Executive Desk Build: Part 2

My wife will *surely* disagree with me on this, but I make mistakes. And in this, Part 2 of our desk build, I will reveal some of them. One of my mentors is fond of saying, “The measure of a woodworker is how good he (she) is at fixing what they screwed up.” There’s a lot of truth to that. I like to think that my mistakes are getting smaller as I get better. I like to think that, but I still make some whoppers.  Fear not, client, we’ve still got a good thing going here!

Mesquite Executive Desk Build: Part 1

My current commission is a large executive desk made of black walnut and honey mesquite. The only guidance given by the client were rough dimensions. Other than that, he said, “Make me the desk you’d want to own if you were making it for yourself.” That caused me a month of existential anguish, as I searched my soul for what I’d want in a desk. I wish I was kidding about that, but this really turned into analysis paralysis. South Texas mesquite (aka Honey Mesquite) is an extremely cool-looking wood with a sort-of rustic feel, so that was my starting point.