I'm looking at making some cutting boards I'm using Maple and and thought Cherry would look nice, but the cheepest I can find it is $6.75 bf, but they have Brazilian Cherry at 3.40bf, is Brazilian Cherry food safe? how well dose it hold up? the only Cherry I've uses was some I saved from being firewood
Richard
It's safe enough, but remember, it ranks right up there with cold rolled steel in hardness. It also tends to chip easily. It will dull blades/bits like crazy.
Richard Clements wrote:
They would be really pretty, and they'd darken with age to a really nice deep red color. They would probably dull your knives, if you are anal about your knives. We have the sawz-all knifes that you get for a buck each, so we're not too concerned. I made my dining room table out of the stuff, and it was murder on my sawblades, murder on my planes and murder on me and my lungs. I was sanding it with a regular old dust mask on, and it gave me a bloody nose. Respirator recommended. I read up a bit on it when I was considering it for the table, and it seems to have a lot of silicon in it, supposedly drawn up by the roots. Very abrasive. The other thing to mention -- It moves ALOT. I would assume a cutting board would be relatively unfinished, so if you do a breadboard edge, do it right, with tabs and elongated holes. Anything else will self destruct. Also, if you are doing any glue ups, use biscuits, or T&G, and wipe the ends good with acetone or something first to get rid of the oils. It's kinda like teak, it doesn't like to take glue into the pores. It can be glued, but don't drop the cutting board too many times. If push comes to shove, it will split on the glue joint because the stuff is like a rock. That's my two cents...
For a cutting board? No reason to. I've never doweled a cutting board and I've never had one come apart, even mixing maple and exotics -- which I do frequently.
--RC
That which does not kill us makes us stronger. --Friedrich Nietzsche Never get your philosophy from some guy who ended up in the looney bin. -- Wiz Zumwalt
If it were me, I'd probably throw a biscuit or two in there, but I guess it depends on how big you make it. My cutting board is about 2 feet wide, and almost the width of the counter. It stays there all the time. If you're just making the little hand-held "miniature pizza paddle" type, I wouldn't bother.
The maple cutting board I got from Kmart came apart in the wash. No prob, it wound up being a bunch of jigs and knife handles. The cost per board foot was competitive with lumberyard maple, too.
Well I hope I can build a better cutting board than you can buy at Kmart! (He said huffily.)
Seriously, someone mentioned the size of the cutting board. Mine are all the pizza paddle type with a cutting surface about 8-12" by
10-14". I hadn't thought about what might happen with a larger one. OTOH I like to make mine an 1-1/2" thick, so something much bigger than what I make would be hard to handle.--RC
That which does not kill us makes us stronger. --Friedrich Nietzsche Never get your philosophy from some guy who ended up in the looney bin. -- Wiz Zumwalt
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