Cheese shop

 Boards

For those of you who follow my woodworking adventures, you will be aware of the popularity of my cheese and chopping boards.

For new visitors I have been producing boards of various sorts for about 7 years. The first was a hand carved oak cutting board which a work colleague had asked me to make as a wedding gift for one of her friends.

As time progressed the original was developed in to 2 sizes of chop chop boards, followed by 2 sizes of cheese board ('all the cheese', and smaller' bit of cheese ').

On a recent visit to Cromford mill I noticed the cheese shop was stocking a range of wooden goods and thought this would be a great outlet for my work.

Several emails and a couple of meetings later, Jess placed her first order. I had made a small sample board and carved the business name in to the surface, which I thought could be used for tasting samples on the counter.

The small board seemed to impress Jess so 5 were ordered. The other boards which caused much interest were what I called stripey boards, made from 2 varieties of timber with contrasting colours.

The cheese boards of course had to be in there, Jess telling me that anything with a mouse on would sell.

 

 

 

 

 

 Stripey boards.

For a long time I have admired images on the internet of wooden goods produced using contrasting timbers to produce stripes or patterns in the finished product. I have never had enough confidence to try to make things of this type, but my brother recently gave me some spare walnut worktop and some old maple kitchen cupboard doors, so I decided to have a go.

I cut strips of timber about 30mm wide, turned through 90 degrees so top and bottom faces became the verticals to produce a board approx. 250mm wide, the size being determined by the size of my planer thicknesser. The pieces were then glued and clamped and left to dry for 24 hours.

Once thoroughly dry the board was put through the thicknesser to flatten then sanded and oiled to finish.

Successful combinations Walnut/Maple, Walnut/Chestnut, Oak/Mahogany and Oak/ Beech. The greater the colour contrast the more striking the result.