This is my first cutting board ever. I am surprised at how nicely it turned out. Not quite perfect, but if you want perfect you can get it at Target. I can only post one photo so I just will show the end result. Hopefully your imagination can fill in the intermediate results.
Started by squaring some scrap pieces of walnut using a jointer and planer. I then cut it up and glued it together so that the end grain was exposed. I passed that through the jointer and planer again to flatten it. This is definitely not recommended as the jointer/planer can have failures with end grain, but I didn’t have a good flattening bit for my Shapeoko and I have never flattened the spoil board. The cutting board is around 1" thick.
I then put it on my Shapeoko and cut juice grooves on both sides using a bowl bit.
I had found a maple leaf on the sidewalk and taken a photo. I traced the photo on InkScape using separate layers for the outline of the leaf and the stem. The only “artistry” involved was deciding what parts of the stem to keep. This was my first time using Inkscape, so this took a bit longer than I expected. I might try this entirely in Carbide Create if there is a next time. I saved the Inkscape drawing as an .svg file for importing it into Carbide Create.
I then learned how to do inlays by reading up on this forum. I created a thin (1/2" thick) maple end grain piece out of some scraps. I flattened it just using a sheet of sandpaper sitting on the table saw as I figured it was not critical to be perfectly flat. The size of the rectangles don’t match the ones on the cutting board, but I didn’t want to use up good maple on this. If I were to do this again, I would make the maple end grain pieces the same dimension and orient them so that they are aligned with the walnut end grain pieces. I cut out the leaf part to a height of almost 1/4" using a combination of 1/4" and 1/8" flat end mills for clearing and a 30 deg V bit for the fine details.
I then cut out the recess part on the cutting board using the same combinations of bits for clearing and detail.
I glued the leaf into the board using lots of clamps and then used a flat end mill to remove the excess.
I then made a small end grain board (1/2" thick) out walnut sap wood (which is a bit lighter in color). I cut out the stem part again using the same combination of bits for clearing and fine detail. If I were to do this again, I would be far less aggressive with the depth of cut and speeds for this step. Some of the thin details of the stem were damaged.
I cut out the corresponding part in the cutting board using just the 30 degree V bit as the channel were quite narrow.
I then glued everything together with lots of clamps and then removed the excess material using a flat end mill. There were lots of imperfections especially in the stem portion that I tried to patch with either cyano acrylate, epoxy, or Titebond 3 mixed with sawdust. The end result was just okay – better attention to feed rates and depth of cut is needed.
Here is the end result after finishing with Watco butcher block oil.
I hope the fine details of the stem survive knives cutting on them, but only time will tell. Thanks for reading this rather long post.
