Up-cycling to Minimize Waste

Nine cuttings boards made from off-cuts from my previous work.

February 20, 2025

As a woodworker, I have a deep respect for trees that produced the wood that I use. Many were probably older than I am and I feel an obligation to use as much of the wood as practicable.

I started making end-grain cutting boards last year and I am delighted at the endless design possibilities. In that time I've created almost 60 boards and I have saved all of the off-cuts (scraps) that might be large enough to use in future designs.

Using these cut-offs, I have created 9 cutting boards in mosaic designs. They all have some combination of Black Walnut, Sapele, White Oak, Cherry, and Maple. 

In many cases, the individual pieces were too small to use directly so I was able to glue smaller pieces together making pieces that were large enough to use. Since the designs consist of multiple rows or columns of wood, the trick is to combine pieces of similar width or thickness. 

The boards can be found in my on-line store: they are numbers 2025-058 through 2025-066. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction knowing that I've rescued these offcuts from a trip to the landfill and they will continue to have beautiful and useful lives as end-grain cutting boards.