Frederic Chopin-Board

I was asked to make a 10" x 24" end grain cutting board about a year ago, I came up with the idea to engrave music notation on it at some point and naturally a cutting board or "Chopin board" would have Frederic Chopin engraved in it. I happen to like the Waltz in C# minor OPA 64 so that's what I used, and this is how id made it.

I decided that the staff would be integrated into the board so I knew I was going to have to make a pretty precise plan to make sure the engraving would overly it properly. I designed at the end grain and staff veneers in fusion 360.I fist removed all of the staff lines form the sheet music image I found, then I converted it to SVG and imported the SVG into fusion. I could then resize the SVG to the size of my cutting board and layout all of the lines and spaces that would become end grain and layers of veneer.

I chose some walnut and maple that had been sitting around in my shop for a wile and began cutting up pasts to create the end grain components. the two side pieces where easy, but the end grain parts the would be between the staff veneers would have to be very accurate so I made them all oversized and milled them to there final dimensions on the CNC.

Each of the layers that would fit between the veneer staff lines would have to be cut and glued up, and milled to final thickness before gluing together with all the veneers in one big glue up. I didn't get any video of this glue up, it was a big mess as I had to work very quickly so the glue didn't prematurely set with this many layers. there where 5 end grain blocks and 4 sets of 9 veneers (5 walnut and 4 maple). Once they had dried I leveled on side on the CNC and used the joiner to flatten both sided to glue on the end blocks.

Once the board was all together I could mill both sideds flat on the CNC and then to final dimension on the drum sander. then I cut the profile on the CNC and cut the engraving with a V bit.

I then filled the engraved lines with CA glue and sanded flat again. I cut the round over with a hand router and finished it up with some coconut oil, and once that had soaked in I applied a mix of coconut oil and bees wax I call Board Butter.