WW Club Cutting Boards

[gdon_2003 (Guy Donham)]

I am making 20 cutting boards out of oak, walnut, sweet gun and cherry. We are going to have a finishing contest in August and will hand these out July 8, 2023.

My question is should I engrave out club logo or laser it. I will sand in my drum sander to 150 grit but each person will finish sand and finish. I would think the engraving might survive better than a laser but what do you think?

This is the first 5. I am using the R&R clamps made for clamping cabinet doors. I dont think they are in business any more but I have a bunch of these. They work well for gluing up boards that are less than 24" wide.

I started with rough cut lumber and cut it into 18" pieces. I face jointed each piece and one edge. Then I cut them to size and ran them through the planner. Since this was rough cut lumber I had to plane all pieces down to the same height by the smallest height of each species. I set a stop on my Dewalt 735 planner to stop when I got to the minimum thickness. After the planning I cut them to size on the table saw and edge jointed both sides again.

I am using TiteBond III to glue them up because it is water proof. The cutting boards can be cutting boards or wall hangers or whatever the participants want to make them into. All 20 will be the same species and in the same order.

This was a lot of work to get 84 pieces jointed, planed, sawed and jointed again. I made some extra pieces because just enough is never enough. You always find a bad board with this many from rough lumber.

[mhotchin (Michael Hotchin)]

How big is your logo? Laser will be able to make a clear image at much smaller sizes.

If you have the time, a shallow (like .5mm) pocket for a laser image would protect the image.

[CrookedWoodTex (Tex)]

There are really only two points for putting on a logo: pride and return business.

Which one of those is important to these items?

[GJM (Gary Morgen)]

Since these are long-grain boards which will be further sanded, I would recommend etching the logo. The laser marks are sure to be damaged by subsequent sandings…whereas the etching will just become a slightly finer line (if you use a ‘V’-bit) with slightly larger spacing and will likely look even better when lightly sanded.