I’ve been wanting to make some cutting boards for a while now and I thought Christmas gifts would be the perfect reason to finally buckle down and do it.  Being that it was the end of the year, my wife and I were super slammed with stuff for Zelo Photography (which is our full time photography business) and I wasn’t going to have the time to assemble my new Ridgid Jointer, and I didn’t have a dedicated planer yet.  Fortunately, we were out of town to meet with one of our awesome wedding couples and it just so happened that there was a Rockler Woodworking store a couple miles away.  I needed to pick up a couple items anyway, so we popped in and that’s when I saw the Rockler cutting board kits!  The kits come with various species of wood and the boards are all jointed and planed (for the most part) and all you need to do is glue them together and sand them smooth and you’re done!  Well….that’s how they’re intended to be assembled.  I on the other hand, had to mix it up a bit  🙂

Instead of simply glueing the boards together, I decided to mix and match all the boards from the various kits and come up with one of a kind layouts. Now no cutting board will be the same!  If that wasn’t enough, I decided to throw in another twist and incorporate plugs made out of recycled skateboards.  I wanted to give these cutting boards a personal touch and since my brother and I were skateboarders back in the day, I felt it was only right to pay homage this way.  Then I customized these cutting board kits even further by adding cutouts on the bottom edges for finger clearance so it’s easier to pick up the cutting boards from kitchen counter or table.  And last but not least I wanted to make sure the recipients of these cutting boards would never forget where they got the cutting board so I branded the Stuff Seth Makes logo using a mini branding iron I got from a seller on Etsy.

In the end, it still took a lot of time to put these cutting boards together.  And even though it was a pretty basic kit, I had already gained a lot of knowledge from so many fellow woodworkers in the social media world, one of which is Brad at Fix This Build That who shared a great tip for raising the grain of the wood.  You’ll see that tip in the video below.  All in all, I’m super happy with how the cutting boards came out and I hope the recipients will get a lot of good use out of them….although they’re so pretty they might just end up as decor, haha!

During the process of putting together these cutting boards, I videotaped the whole thing and edited what I think is a pretty cool video that I’m really happy with.  As a photographer, I’m usually the one behind the camera, so this was a bit out of my comfort zone.  But everything is a learning experience, right?  I’ve already started working on a couple new videos and I feel like my screen presence is already improving.  Here’s the cutting board video and I hope you enjoy it!

If you’re not already subscribed to my YouTube channel, I’d love to have you.  You can also follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and of course right here on the Stuff Seth Makes Blog.  Here are a few cutting board photos for your viewing pleasure!

 

 

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