Cutting Boards - Part 2

There are several possibilities for making a handle on a kitchen board. One is to cut/shape it directly into the body but that is not suitable for a board glued from blocks, as the handle would be fragile and prone to breaking. The second possibility is to make a simple metal handle from stainless steel or brass. The third possibility is a combination of wood and metal.

My first plan was to buy finished handles from stainless steel but I could not find anything suitable. So I bought a 6 mm stainless steel rod to make handles out of. However 1 m was not enough for all seven boards so I ended up with the last, and most complicated, possibility – a combination of wood and metal.

Because I needed 7 handles I cut the steel rod into 14 identical pieces and I bent them in the middle to approximately 110°. For the handles intended for the larger boards I used a slightly bigger radius for the bend so the final handle is slightly wider. I marked with masking tape how deep into wood the metal will go and I cut into it notches with an angle grinder to get better glue adhesion.

For the wooden parts of the handles, I used jatoba offcuts too small to use for knife handles as well as for the kitchen boards. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the process, so I will have to do it next time.

I did not use any templates or jigs to form the handles, I simply ground the rough shape on the belt sander and then smoothed the surface manually. After that, I glued in the metal parts. This might have been a mistake - I suspect that it will complicate the final glue-up a little. I intended to do that this week but unfortunately, other duties interfered with my plans again. So we will know whether it was a mistake to glue the handles together in advance next week.