Cutting Board Materials
If you're brand new to buying lumber, we recommend getting yourself a cutting board kit rather than buying the wood from a big box home center. This is for a number of reasons:
- Cutting board kits are milled to fit together without much trouble, whereas plain lumber can be warped in a number of ways that can be hard to catch in the store.
- Most home centers stock only basic wood species like poplar, oak, pine, and walnut because not many people are buying things like spalted tamarind in large quantities.
- Cutting board kits often include exotic woods like purpleheart, wenge, or zerbrawood, providing much bolder colors and striking grain patterns.
- A cutting board kit is ready to go as soon as you get it home and saves you the work of cutting the lumber down to sizes and widths you want.
Where do you get these cutting board kits? We offer a selection of designs and sizes but if you don't like those, woodworking specialty shops are the best place to find a variety. Woodcraft and Rockler are the biggest names and have a nice selection of kits available in store and online. They also sell individual pieces so you can design your own pattern, but it's easy to spend a lot of money that way.
You can always google cutting board kits or hardwood lumber. There are many online stores that specialize in hardwood and you can design your cutting board one piece at a time! Just make sure you're getting a consistent depth, meaning each piece of would should have at least one dimension in common (like 3/4").