One of the advantages of having a department full of CAD/CAM equipment is that occasionally other departments will come and ask a favour.

A colleague approached me with a small drawing looking for an ornamental chopping board for his new kitchen.

The timing being christmas I acceded to make the project.

In reality a working chopping board would be made from beech often out of blocks with biscuit joints.

The project could be simulated in pine with all the same steps but again for ornamental use.

I ascertained that the facing boards were in mahogany and that a dark wood colour would make a better match.

I selected a piece of wood left over from the guitar project and produced the following drawing from the thumbnail sketch that the colleague gave me.

I added rounded corners to reduce corner chipping and placed a 4mm gutter, (With hindsight the gutter could have done with radius corners.

The top was skimmed with a 12.7mm cutter and then the profile cut to a depth of 30mm (Red)

The 4mm trough (Green) was then cut with a 4mm cutter.

Finally the edge was profiled using a 9.5mm overlo cutter (Blue) keeping the whole manufacturing time for the job down to 25 minutes on the machine.

The job was then final sanded and polished.

Extension tasks could include choices of materials - Plastics - Embeded anti-bacterial agents.

Biscuit Jointing - Block Boarding

Laser cutting a design in to the surface.

Use of water proof glues - Cascamite (Now replaced with Extramite, due to banned substances.(Formaldehyde))