Tagliando Di Legno

Firstly why oak? why not ash or cedar or birch or beech? For me there are very good reasons why oak is the best material for solid wood chopping boards. Apart from the variation in grain and visual texturing, oak is very dense and intrinsically protected from rotting over time by the natural tannins in the wood. In this slab you can see them clearly as the tannin appears black among the dark browns of the grain.

This stunning board is in fact rare English Brown Oak that I feel very lucky to have found.

I don't really have a preoccupation with wooden chopping boards, but I'd understand why someone might think so. It's true that for years and years I kept my eyes open for a really chunky thick stupendously beautiful chopping board made out of one single cut of wood, but simply couldn't find exactly what I wanted.

Well that changed the day I saw this piece of wood sitting on the damp floor of a half open wood shed. It was pretty grey damp and dirty, but there was just something about the shape, the depth and the character of it, that convinced me to take it home. Several weeks later it has become the very rare and gorgeous piece it is now. I thought about keeping it, but I must draw the line and stop keeping everything I make.

I should mention how grateful I still am to my good friend Jessica, who long ago found me an amazing solid oak chopping board that I still have 20 years later. That might be the reason why I am not keeping this one.

For the first few weeks of our acquaintance, this oak slab had to dry out a bit before I could stabilise it so it lived in my warm house until it was ready to work on. Next I set about cleaning all surfaces to expose the grain and character, much of which was still covered by dirt and sawdust from the mill. Once I'd done that it was time to decide which was going to be the top. As it slowly came to life, I realised that there was no clear winner - each main face was beautiful and full of brown oak character. ( I'll explain what 'brown oak' is soon) . That decision was going to determine which face had to be levelled and flattened as the bottom face to provide functional stability. In the end I levelled both faces as I just couldn't resign either face to a life in the shadow underneath. 

The next labour of love was conditioning and stabilising the wood for a lifetime in someone's kitchen.

This slab has an awful lot of character in the form of splits - none of them life threatening or serious enough to weaken the slab, but it is very important to carefully inspect and deal with each crack and split to consider which must be sealed and which can be left to evolve.

Epoxy resin is very good at filling gaps and is resistant to moisture so most of the large splits are repaired using that. Over the next few weeks, split by crack, the slab was sealed and stabilised, planed, chiselled and sanded to get it to the stage where I am happy to call it Tagliando Di Legno and finally draw to a close my own search and desire for the kind of solid oak chopping board I'd always wanted.

This was a heavy piece of oak. I knew that handles were necessary, especially if both faces could be considered the top. The handles had to work aesthetically with the wood, but also I wanted them to be reversible so that no matter which face was used as top, the handles would look the same from the design point of view.

There are 4 applications of mineral oil on the board. It's completely food safe and doesn't react with air to harden. The colours that came out after the first application were just stunning. 

It's taken a while to nurture it to a condition fit for kings, but I am glad to have spent the time on it to turn it into what I am proud of and I hope whoever buys is from my Etsy shop will love it as much as I do.

Now, not forgetting the 'brown oak' explanation. Brown oak is rare and sought after and only comes from oak trees that have had a symbiotic relationship with a particular fungus that makes it brown. This means the older an oak tree gets, the more chance it will attract fungi. You can read more about brown oak online.

I've been lucky enough to uncover brown oak a few times and used it in Tavolinetto da Salotto - the first chestnut/oak side table I made.(which is also sold) very quickly.