Charcuterie Board

From Scraps to Functional Decor

I had some leftover Hickory wood from building the work area tabletop. Initially, I wasn’t fully sure what I was going to do with the leftovers, as they weren’t big enough to do much with.

Opportunity struck for a solution to my problem, as soon as my dear wife said she wanted to get a nice serving platter for when we have guests over. The concept was pretty easy however the wood situation wasn’t in my favor as I didn’t have pieces large enough to make what she had wanted out of a single piece. It didn’t take long for the brain to catch up to the situation with a solution, create a composite blank and mill it to the shape I want.

As with most things in life, the idea is far easier said than accomplished. I had a substantial pile of scraps. None were straight or uniform in any way.

So what is an ole southern boy who just so happens to have an engineer’s mind (wife wonders doesn’t consider that always a perk)? Use the mill to create the pieces I need to assemble a composite blank and then go from there. 

For the pros out there I know they are saying, just use a jointer. Sadly that is simply one tool I do not possess and converting my table saw for it was just more of a hassle than I cared to do. Within about 20 minutes I had the pieces I needed that the CNC mill carved out. Break out the biscuit joiner and a bit of glue and we had our composite blank to work with.

The next day while I worked upstairs, the mill went to work. 4 hours later the product I must say looked better than what you get at the store. It had a bit of heft to it with it being hickory, but solid as a rock.