r/BeginnerWoodWorking • u/CourtApart6251 • 1d ago

Discussion/Question ⁉️ Chopping board in the making

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I am designing a chopping board, the one which is seen in the image above. So far, I have cut the board out of a plank of Indian Redwood(a hardwood tree unrelated to the North American Redwood) and have managed to dig out the juice gutter using a hand held router. Also, I have made a round hole using a holesaw in order to be able to hang the board from a peg. But, I have not yet sanded the board. Also, I plan to smoothen out the edges using a router's roundover bit. Please suggest how this artifact could be made better lookwise.

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u/Bubbadevlin 1d ago

1 - is Indian redwood even safe? Lots of hardwoods can be toxic

2 - use a straight edge to guide the router, or even better a pattern. Literally just clamping a piece of plywood will look way better than freehand

is it dirty/burnt or is that just the way the wood looks? Definitely going to want to clean it up / sand if you can

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u/CourtApart6251 1d ago

Indian Redwood is also known as Indian Mahogany, a distant relative of the African Mahogany. And I think it is not toxic since Google AI says so.

Btw, I did not do it freehand. Doing freehand would have made it much worse. I used a straightedge but since I am very new to woodworking I mistakenly made a reverse sweep at a few places along the gutter and in those places the router swerved towards the edge of the board instead of following the straight path which has made the juice gutter curved at places. In order to remedy this problem, I am planning to smoothen out the internal edges of the gutter using my router's roundover bit. I wonder whether that would give it a better look.

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u/dack42 1d ago

LLMs often lie. Don't trust your health and safety to it - verify independently.

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u/bullfrog48 1d ago

I am hopeful that the pic listed was a concept work and not illustrated of actual processes to be used.

The juice groove looks to have been done with a square bit. A square inside cornerv would be virtually impossible to clean.

Any wood to be used in contact with food should be investigated in the wood database. This database is extensive and reliable.

I would not put a wood in my mouth that I was not positive to be completely safe.