Dino Charcuterie Board

In this woodworking shorts video, I'm making a charcuterie board for kids. A charcuterie board is a decorative board meant for holding meat, cheese and fruit. I'm using walnut wood along with a piece of hard maple wood. I'll walk you through the process on how to make a charcuterie board. I used a Ridgid jigsaw to cut out the dino shape, but a scroll saw probably should have been a better choice. I also used my DeWalt DWE7491 table saw and my DeWalt DW735 planer for most of this project and then I finished up the board with a round over and mineral oil.

Charcuterie boards make great gives as well. This dino charcuterie board was a gift for my 6 year old son. He loves dinosaurs, meat and cheese.

Amazon Links (helps support my channel, thank you!)

Mineral oil- https://amzn.to/3HhFQuj

Titebond 3- https://amzn.to/3FDF8qV

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-Wood of your choice

-Wood glue

Pick an animal or shape you want to use for your board. Be sure it has enough area to lay out some meat and cheese. Place some meat cheese and crackers on a piece of paper and sketch your shape around it. You may need to tape a few pieces of paper together or use larger paper.

My final board is 3/4" thick with 1" wide pieces of wood. I used walnut and hard maple. Decide how you would like the wood on your board and then rough cut the pieces and lay them over your stencil. Be sure the entire stencil is covered with wood. Then cut out your stencil and lay it on top of the wood just to make sure you have enough wood cut. Leave the boards about 1/8" thicker than they need to be so you can take them down to final width when planning the board.

Note: Make sure the board you made can fit through your planer or drum sander.

Now put several lines through the laid out boards to mark their position. Now flip them on their side and spread out the wood glue. Be sure to use food safe wood glue and to spread evenly to the entire face of the boards. Now flip them back and clamp them up with good even pressure. Its a good idea to use cauls to keep your board as flat as possible. Let the board dry for 24 hours. Then remove the clamps and scrap off any excess dried glue.

Now run the board through the planner or drum sander to make it smooth and to take it down to its final thickness.

Trace the stencil onto the board. Then used either a jigsaw or a scroll saw to cut out the shape.

Sand the edges and the face from 40-120 grit sand paper. You may want to used a paint stirring stick with sand paper on it to get the details around the edge.

Now, use a router and add a round over. The size of the round over is personal preference. Hand sand any imperfections left from the router with 120 grit sand paper.

Water pop the board by spraying or soaking in water. Then allow to completely dry before proceeding to the next step.

Water popping with cause the grain to stand up, leaving the board rough. This will allow you to sand that rough grain off. This will allow your board to stay smoother even after washing.

Once the board is completely dry, finish sand to 220 grit sand paper. Then apply or soak the board with food grade mineral oil. Once the board has absorbed as much oil as it can, wipe off any excess oil.

That's it! Clean your board and throw some meat cheese and crackers on it and surprise you kids with it! I promise they will love it!