The Woodshop Shed

Charcuterie Boards - FAILED Design

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


This is the project that led me to lumberjocks. Although it did not work out well for me I thought I would post it in hopes that others would learn from my mistakes and maybe save some time (and wood).My daughter in law came to me with some pictures of some very unique looking charcuterie boards she found on Pintrest that she wanted for their new home in LA. At the time I did not know what a charcuterie board was, but after a little research, I was ready to go. They came out great. She was very pleased. From the pictures you can see they have a whisky barrel feel to them very unique to other board designs. I made the first one (the rectangle), of red oak and cherry. I had one piece of red oak, and she wanted this design that looked like planking, so I cut the board apart, and flipped the pieces over and end to end so the grain did not match. Then I cut it apart in the other direction, and glued in the cherry across the other direction. When we were settling on the design to use, I could tell Kim also was very interested in the round shape. It turned out that I had enough wood, and was intrigued with the shape, and so I made a matching board in the other shape. I remember being concerned about the perpendicular grain when running the boards through the planer. I thought there would be chip out, but they came out great (until later)...Some other things about the build:
- Built in NH, used in southern CA.
- Glue used Titebond II
- In LA (hot and dry) for about a month before use
- Rectangle board just under 3/4”
- Round board thinner 5/8”
- Food safe finish of mineral oil and bees waxThe boards were used for the first time over Thanksgiving. After use, they were washed off by hand and they noticed the splitting in the last two pictures. The problem (as pointed out in the joinery forum) was the perpendicular pieces, and their effect on interfering with the expansion/contraction. If you are interested you can see the full explanation in the forum: https://www.lumberjocks.com/topics/312427.Note that both of these boards exhibited the same types of separation. I made a few other charcuterie boards over this same period, but all of those were the more traditional design with all grains in the same direction, and none of those have shown problems like this.

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