Category: Products

Okay. So we had our beech end grain cutting boards glued up, sanded, and ready to be finished. And then we needed to tidy up a bit before making the final push to listing product on our Etsy Store and (hopefully) shipping them. And then, … we ran into some long grain cutting boards we had made a while ago. Sigh! Our entire process got sidetracked while we refactored and upgraded the long grain cutting boards to be serving platters.

We decided to add a juice groove to one side of the beech boards so that if they are used for carving a turkey or a roast during the holiday season all the juice doesn’t run off and mess up the counters. We also added a finger groove to make them easier to pick up. While all this may seem trivial, a large part of the challenge is making tasks precisely replicable. This means the first time, always takes longer as there is a lot of “figuring out” that needs to happen.

Following are pictures of some of the finished end grain boards as well as some of the other boards we made.

Update: having got everything “done” we showed off our fine handiwork to a friend who’s one experienced woodworker. His first question was “what glue did you use?” The recommendation we’d received from several sources was to use a product called Tirebond II, a water resistant glue — which we did. Our friend’s recommendation was that we use Titebond III, a waterproof glue. Since this particular individual is a very experienced woodworker with a national reputation, we decided to follow his advice. We will not be offering up our current batch of end grain cutting boards for sale.

For those of you who’ve been following our woodworking venture, we have (finally!!!) listed our first products on Etsy!!! We’ve had the store set up but hadn’t stocked it with product.

Getting stocked was more challenging than we had anticipated. It’s not so much getting stocked since we had inventory, but it’s all of the other details :  presentation, photography, pricing, packaging, policies, …. the list goes on. It’s not that any one thing is difficult, it’s that the details make a difference. Yeah, we could ship stuff in a paper bag with a bunch of stamps, but that seems déclassé. On the other hand, wrapping product in silk and having it delivered by carrier pigeon’s isn’t cost effective. Plus you have to train the pigeons. We nixed that idea.

 

And then, as it happens, in the middle of all this, life intervened. We had house guest, a multi-day class on how to finish wood from a nationally renowned … finisher, and some of our equipment needed to be repaired, and … it was a long slog to get to the finish. Except that it isn’t the end, it’s the beginning on a very long haul. We will be quite happy when we have some robotic assistants built. But experiencing the pain and pinch points of manufacturing a product and getting it to market is a prerequisite.

But yes, we have product — cutting boards specifically. We think they look quite nice and that people will enjoy using them. We’ve added little touches based on our experience — the shape of the bottom, for example that allow one’s finger to slip under the board to pick it up, or seasoning the boards in a trough of warmed mineral oil to facilitate absorption. There a number of other details that we hope people will recognize, but that requires actually shipping product.

Following are pictures of our first 10 cutting boards. Visit our store, like it, and follow the adventure!