Just picked up a olive wood cutting board. How should I cut this up to yield the best blanks. It's a little less than 5/8" thick so I'll be limited on pen styles.
14" on top edge. 5 1/2" left edge.
Thanks for any input.
Beautiful piece of Olive wood...!
I would love to know from where these cutting boards come from, China doesn't have Olive wood, and I doubt they would be buying it from Italy, Spain, Portugal or other, to make cutting boards, no way in hell, those are sourced from somewhere where, Olive wood is abundant and all the work is done manually, old style artesian shops from some European villages.
The boards being a little thin for pen blanks, is just a coincidence, the people making them are not deliberately making them like that so that they couldn't be use for pen making, knowing where these are made, one could easily contact them and request the boards to be made a little thicker, or a little extra cost, off-course, as they would make less boards from a log...!
Now, 5"1/2 wide and 14" longboard, without cracks (well, as far as I can see...!) that alone is something else however, this cutting board shows clearly that is 1 half of the log, the sapwood on the bottom of the pic and the log's center towards the log pith, at the top of the image.
Now, from the width of the sapwood, the log that board was cut from, should have been approx. 12" to 15" wide, they normally don't use any wood on the vicinity of the pith, 4" and sometimes more, they know, is from where the wood will be forced to crack.
What this mean is that, the logs are of considerable size therefore the trees have to be very old, someone, somewhere, in a remote village, is cutting/using very old perfect Olive wood to hand-craft cutting boards and I'm sure some other hand-made items, someone from the "city" (businessman) is buying all this poor folk(s) is doing, paying him peanuts and sell its items to big stores, making good money that I'm sure, it will be a lot more than what he pays the folk doing them, with his own Olive wood (99% of the cases).
I'm not sure, how much you paid for it, I remember to have read something in the vicinity of $15.00 or so, how many middle man there were before you the customer...???, at least 2, I doubt the poor fellow making these, will get $4.00 per board finish, including wood. I don't have any stores selling these boards here in Australia (not as far as I know), if I had, I would be tracing these boards to its origin, and I would certainly, visit the artisan/woodworker shop and share a cup with him, I'm certain we would have a very interesting conversation...!:wink::biggrin:
As for the "best" way to cut that board, is just no best way, as everyone would have a different opinion on the issue, and that's OK, there is no right or wrong but, simply preferences and they vary from person to person.
I like straight lines but, I would probably cut this board as shown in my attached pic, the grain on that board would look great with a slight angle so, this would be my option...!
PS: I know, I wasn't asked to provide a possible route these Olive wood cutting boards, may have travelled to reach you, some would say, irrelevant, others may think is all a story, they couldn't care less and that OK by me however, I care, I know better and maybe, just maybe, some people would find interesting to know that far, its all part of life, huh...??:wink::biggrin:
Cheers
George
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