I made this charcuterie board, cutting board, serving trays from some scrap hardwood pieces I had laying around the shop. Starting from the center, the strips are: walnut, maple, walnut, maple, and angelique. All of these are hardwood that work well for cutting boards and the dark/light contrast of the walnut and maple are pretty common for cutting boards these days. The angelique wood is the odd ball here, as it was an experiment for me to use it for the first time for this type of application. I knew it was plenty hard enough to work, and the color and grain pattern worked well with the walnut and maple. I just wasn’t certain how well it would work in the finished piece. I will say, it took a bit more sanding than the walnut and maple. It was about five rounds of sanding, wetting to raise the grain, and sanding again before I got it to a level of smoothness with which I was happy. After all of the sanding, a standardized combination of mineral oil and beeswax were used to finish this charcuterie board.

if you are new to woodworking, or even just new to making cutting boards, charcuterie boards, or serving trays and don’t feel confident in freehanding your handles, you can always buy a set of acrylic handle templates. A set of templates gives you some variety to choose from, and makes it easy to follow the pattern with a flush trim router bit. Just use some double-sided tape to hold the template in place, trim the bulk of the excess wood away with a jig saw or bandsaw to reduce the load on your router, and then follow the template with the router.

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