Yes use Maple. You want Hard Maple or Sugar Maple. Assuming you buy
boards that are surfaced flat, rip them to a width about 1/8" wider
than the thickness of board you want. Using different thickness boards
can add visual interest by making different width strips. If the rips
are clean enough then just flip them on edge and do a glue up using
Titebond II. Titebond III is a little more water secure but is the
wrong color for Maple. Make sure each board fits tight along its
entire length. If the rips are not super clean, then joint the ripped
faces. If you have any gaps, then joint them away.You may need to rip
a little wider to account for thickness loss of jointer. You want the
cutting face to be the edges of the boards.

Assuming you are going 1 to 1 1/2" thick, only glue up about 4 or 5
strips at a time to be sure you get good clamping pressure. Make as
many of the sub slabs as you need for the final board size. Flatten
the slabs in a wide sander or with a belt sander or other method. Hard
Maple will chip if you try to machine plane it but you could hand
plane if you are good.

Glue the slabs together into one final board. Flatten, dimension,
shape the edges as desired and sand out to 150.

Soak with mineral oil once a day for a week, onece a week for a month
and once a month for a year. This will yellow the wood significantly
but more importantly, the oil fills all the voids where the enemy
"Water" would like to go. It aslo keeps out other food oils that can
go rancid.

After using, rinse with hot water, dry with a towel and stand on edge
until dry. If occasionally you want to disinfect it, a 10% solution of
vinegar in warm water will do the trick, dry as stated before.

Never soak it in water. If you use Boiled Linseed Oil as suggested or
any other oil BE SURE it is pure and does not have any "Dries" in it.
These are heavy metal and very toxic. You can get mineral oil at
culinary shops or at the pharmacy. Some people suggest other fod oils
and generally they can go rancid so they are not suggested although it
seems that maybe walnut oil works, even though walnust themselves go
rancid quite easily but it is in pretty wide use in Europe. I prefer
mineral oil.

Finally, if it ever splits along a glue line (it can happen), just let
it dry for a week or two, rip it down that glueline and re-glue it.


On May 4, 6:02*am, Sasha wrote:
After having a doizen or so comercial cutting boards split and thrown
into trash I want to make my own. Can someone give me guidance how to
make it so it won't split, how to finish it, if it at all, etc. Most
important for me is it shoiuld be very durable as I don't want to make
it every month. I plan using maple to make it.