Cutting Boards - Part 6

As my next step in kitchen cutting board manufacturing, I decided to make ten small pieces from Jatoba. That should give me an adequate estimate of time for future reference.

To make the procedure easier, I have drawn a template for different board sizes with three different size ratios – 4/3, 3/2, and the golden ratio. I do not need to adhere to these precisely but in combination with an excel sheet, they allow me to estimate better the amount of material needed for my goal and avoid preparing too much/too little.

This time I had a bit bigger offcuts available, 100 to 120 mm wide and 30 mm thick. I contemplated whether to cut them into smaller pieces or not. In the end, I decided to cut them into 50 mm wide pieces. The reasons for this were two. Firstly, all these offcuts have rounded edges so I needed to make at least two cuts on my table so to make them square again. Adding one cut was not that much work. And secondly, smaller pieces mean a nicer mosaic structure.

So I calculated how many pieces I need and I cut them into stripes. The goal is to make boards ca 160 mm wide so cover that width I need three 50 mm stripes and a bit. Therefore I cut one 25 wide piece for every three 50 mm. That way I should be able to get pieces wide enough to cover the whole board with and still have left over a bit to cut off for clean edges. I estimate that 10-25% of the wood will end up in the oven but that is always the case with woodwork.

Next week I will write about gluing the boards.