Matching Walnut Salumi Boards With Maple

Walnut salumi boards

The matching walnut and maple Salumi boards were a wedding present for good friends Justin and Rebecca. After hearing that they, “eat a Salumi plate almost every night”, I set to work. Obviously a variation on several of earlier pieces on the site, I made a plan for two matching boards – one 12″ board for the two of them, and one 16″ board for if they are entertaining (or REALLY hungry). I gathered from the groom that their apartment stuff was more “square” than “round”, so that went into the shape of the piece.

walnut              walnut in the planer

This is the original piece of wood prior to planing, and being run through the planer. After that, the stock was milled to the various sizes needed for the two boards. 1/2″ was cut on the band saw from the bottom of the handle piece.

walnut salumi board unglued  cutting the handle

One board was cut at an angle to generate the second “root” of the maple.The trickiest part (in hindsight, likely as my blade was not true!) was getting the diagonal stripe cut and then getting enough pressure to glue it up tightly (answer: loads of clamps, much patience).

angled maple stripe

Glue-up below:

 Glue up   Glue up

Following that, holes for biscuits were cut in the pieces, and then everything was glued up in sections.

biscuits   Glue-up

Glue-up  Glue-up

Profile of the small board, prior to adding the removed half inch to the top of the handle
small-walnut-salumi-board  small walnut salumi board

small walnut salumi board  small walnut salumi board

Then Gluing up the bigger walnut salumi board, and the both of them at the mid-way point:

large salumi board  walnut salumi boards

Next, making templates for each board. I enlisted the help of Marc Green to make some templates that I used as a guide, then cut them on the band saw, and smoothed the edges with a rasp and sandpaper.

salumi board template  cut salumi board template

Template then drawn on boards, cut closely with band saw, then the template stuck to board with double-sided tape, and flush-trimmed at the router table:

template with board  flush trim template

The rest of the handle glued on and clamped.

handle glued  handle glued

After using a flush trim bit on the additional handle, a round-over bit was used to, erm, round-over the handle.  Then the center of the base was dadoed, and then smoothed on the underside with a bowl-carving router bit to create two rails on the outside edges of the base.

round over handle  dado out bottom

Then all remaining edges rounded over and ready for finishing

unfinished salumi board  unfinished salumi board

Mineral oil was then used as an initial finish (left), before using Odie’s Wood Butter to stabilize the wood and as the final finish.

mineral oiled  odies wood butter

The boards were then buffed and the job complete.

  walnut salumi boards

walnut salumi boards  walnut salumi boards

Wishing them happiness ever after!

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