Gorgeous Cutting Boards

Finding a gift that is special and meaningful can be hard.  During Christmas, Joseph and I struggle with finding the perfect gift for each member of our large families - and I've got to admit, a lot of the times it comes down to gift cards.

But for Christmas of 2009, Joseph wanted to make something special for our family, really special.

When he showed me what he wanted to do, it was easier said than done, but it was worth the work.

He made gorgeous checkerboard cutting boards - MADE them!! Joseph was the brains and muscle of the operation and I was his helpful assistant. :)

We started with loads of boards -- a rich purple heart and hard maple. I don't have pictures of every step, but we did have a nice system to get these boards done. We had big plans of making about 10-12 and each one had to be glued twice, so once all the boards into strips we glued one each night.


The picture below is what it looked like about halfway through. It started as 8 strips of wood, then we glued them together alternating purple and maple. You can see form the photo below that there are several different sizes of the strips to make the detailed checker board look.

So in the photo above, we had already glued 8 strips together, then cut them into even more strips the opposite way. Then, we flipped every other strip long-ways to create the pattern. Then, there's more gluing and drying overnight.

Look at all those cutting boards!

But they're not done yet!

They needed a lot of sanding, and Joseph took a router to the edges to make them rounded. He also routed some grooves to act as handles underneath.

Then all they needed was a nice top coat to make the wood absolutely POP!

This was such a rewarding project! Each time we gave them to a family member as a gift, they were blown away that Joseph made them.  It was a lot of hard work but we were thrilled with how they turned out.

I should mention that half the battle of finding Christmas gifts is that we're the only ones who live in Arizona so when we go back to Louisiana we have to load up everyone's gifts (hence the gift cards!). I wish I had a picture of our large suitcase packed full with a dozen cutting boards. Talk about HEAVY!

Source: These cutting boards were made with instructions from awlfreeplans.com.