Reinventing the Chopping Board

When I say chopping board I mean the solid wood variety, obviously. But, as you might know, not all 'solid wood' is actually solid. This is because most of the wooden chopping boards you find from large commercial sellers are in fact, laminate wood. So rather than being made from a single slab of tree, they are made by gluing together lots of wooden blocks or sticks. This is not what I call 'solid wood', but it is, I suppose a valid term for it.

Wood continues to expand and contract in reaction to environmental humidity. This means that often the glue between the laminate pieces becomes gradually weakened over time. 

My mum has two of these wooden chopping boards that she's had for a good few years. Both of them would have looked like solid wood when brand new, but today they look like this. 

Sure, they now have a rustic charm with all the lovely splits along the glue lines, but the only thing holding these sticks together is a glue bond already weakened by time.

These laminate boards are very cheap to replace, so no harm done if they fall apart tomorrow, but this is one reason why all the cutting boards I make are from single slabs of dense wood - much better suited to cope with the steamy kitchen environment - not least because they are too heavy to put in a dishwasher!

Yes the solid wood I use will expand and contract over years , which does eventually show in the kind of exposed joinery I use, but this just adds rustic charm to the piece without causing structural damage.

I have a slab of oak on my kitchen worktop that I've had for 20 years and it still looks great. One of the things I've had to wrestle with is cleaning underneath it. It's very heavy and not easy to lift up. Sometimes moisture gets trapped underneath too , and this isn't good for wood and will attract mould if I leave it too long. 

I've often thought about sticking some rubber feet on the bottom so that I can lift it more easily and moisture won't get trapped under there. But that's a hack so I didn't bother. After all, it's only a Chopping board , right!? 

Wrong! I can do better than that. What if my chopping board was even higher off the worktop with enough clearance underneath to be able to easily wipe clean, and even push a plate or smaller board underneath to help with moving chopped up matter from the board to the pan. What a great idea! 

What If my chopping board was easy to lift up and carry so I could use it as a serving platter? 

Well that would mean that the humble chopping board has, at long last, evolved to become an infinitely more practical and arguably more beautiful work of wood that can take it's pride of place as kitchen furniture to be admired as well as used. 

But that's only my opinion, and I may be a little biased since Brezza Di Legno is my own work of wood and I'm very proud of it.

Here is a video I made showing how people use it in their kitchen: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNh_uSxgND4