Maple and Purpleheart Cutting Boards

This project came from a podcast, The Wood Whisperer, that I started listening to several months ago. Episode 7, released in December 2006 and January 2007, demonstrates the making on a hard maple/purpleheart cutting board. A free set of down-loadable plans for this project is also available from this website. I will warn you that there are several discrepancies between the podcast measurements and the plan measurements. I didn't catch the differences in time to save me from spending more money on the wood than I needed to and thus ending up wasting some rather expensive wood. Since I was not watching this podcast at the time it was released I do not know whether or not someone caught these discrepancies and brought them to light in the chat room of the website. Had I gone through the construction process more completely before I bought the wood, I might have caught the error.

That would be my single disappointment with this project and I should make it clear that I am very pleased with this project in general. It was challenging and required me to learn a few new techniques and develop some alternatives that I had never used before.

Marc Spagnuolo is the host and wood worker of this series of over thirty podcasts. In the space of nineteen minutes he does an excellent job of taking the viewer from the initial wood preparation through making a choice of finish. You end up with a large, heavy cutting board meant for serious use in the kitchen. It measures roughly 12" x 16" x 1 1/4". Since the hard maple and the purpleheart are heavy, dense woods, the total project weight is 7 1/2 pounds.

The maple and the purpleheart are cut into four pieces of differing widths (2 1/4, 1 3/4, 1 1/4, and 3/4) . Then the pieces are arranged in the order shown in the first picture at left and glued into one slab. This was my first time using purpleheart and I found it to be a brittle, very hard wood.

Once the first glue-up (as shown in the picture to the left) was dry, it was off to Keim Lumber's mill shop to sand the slabs to an even depth. The $3 I paid them for this millwork was a pittance compared to buying a $900 sander for my shop. Next the slabs were cut into 1 1/4" pieces and every other piece inverted to make a checkerboard-type pattern . The second glue-up was finished sanded again at Keim Lumber mill shop. After additional sanding, rounding over the top and bottom edges, and routing in hand holds on two sides, a food-safe "Salad Bowl Finish" was applied.

I cut enough wood to make two boards or to have spare material if I encountered a major problem. Fortunately I was able to complete two Christmas presents - one for my wife and one for my son, Eric. The finished cutting board needs only to be maintained with occasional mineral oil.