This maple cheese board with walnut inlay was a gift for my wife. I didn’t take many pictures on this one, but after milling the maple to the correct size, I made three partial cross-cuts for the inlay (obviously on purpose – I hadn’t originally planned for two or anything…), and then cut and glued in the walnut inlay.

Then a dado stack was used to remove the wood from the underside of the board and create two rails for ‘feet’. Following that, a bowl-carving router bit was used to make the underside and interior curves smooth before using a round-over bit to make all the outside corners rounded.

The cheese knives were made from maple and walnut to match the maple cheese board and it’s walnut inlay. Knives were cut from a template using a band saw and then a belt sander was used to shape them into functioning knives.  Knives and boards were finished with Odie’s wood butter.

This cherry cheese board was a housewarming gift for a friend’s new vacation home. The board is made of 2″ deep cherry and is approximately 19″ long x 8″ wide. It features walnut inlay, and a routed area for holding crackers (biscuits!). There are also three cherry cheese knives. Unfortunately, I failed to take pictures throughout the process, however, it was similar to others on the site, with the main difference being the routed cracker area.

First, I used a dado stack to take out most of the underside. Following that, I ran a regular blade from underneath to make a space for the inlay on the underside. Likewise, I used the table saw and crosscut sled to add the two inlay dividers on the top side of the cherry wood cheese board. Following that, I used the router table and a bowl carving bit to flatten the underside of the board, leaving two ridges along the underside ’cause I thought they looked cool. 🙂

I removed some initial material from the ‘cracker slot’ using a large forstner bit, and following that, I set up a ‘template’ on my router table using corner brackets attached to the fence to set the area to be routed out. Following that, the board was sanded and then a round-over bit was used to add a curve to the edges. Small fingered immigrant offspring was then used for sanding (limited success).

The cherry wood cheese board and knives were then oiled with mineral oil (images below), and following that, were treated with Odie’s wood butter.

Hopefully Mel likes it and it gets well used!