I decided to use my router table to form all the grooves, rabbets and dadoes in this project, but you could also do all the machining with a table saw and dado blade. Feel free to modify the positions of the dadoes shown in the Drawings to create spacing that suits your needs best.

Start construction by cutting all the parts to size as specified in the Material List. Then install a 1/2″-diameter straight bit in the router table. Raise the bit to 1/4″ and set the fence so the back of the bit is flush with the fence facings. Rout a 1/2″-wide x 1/4″-deep rabbet in each end of the tray sides to capture the front and back pieces. Next, cut the 1/2″-wide x 1/4″-deep dadoes in the tray sides for the cross and rear dividers. Be sure to remember that the tray sides are mirror opposites of each other.

Milling More Grooves, Dadoes

Switch to a 1/4″ straight bit, set its height to 1/4″ and position the fence 1/4″ away from the back of the bit. Go ahead and mill a groove for the tray’s bottom panel along the inside faces of the tray sides, front and back, along the full length of these parts.

You can use the same bit at the same height to rout the four dadoes in the tray front and cross divider that will hold the silverware dividers. I found it helpful to tape these two pieces together with their ends aligned so I could rout both parts at the same time. It ensures that the dadoes will line up with one another correctly when the tray is assembled.

Now, gather the four silverware dividers so you can draw a large radius on the top edge of each to mark their recessed cutouts. To lay these out, first draw a centerline across the width of each divider, and mark the center point of these lines (it establishes the apex of the curve).

Open a compass to 4-1/2″ then set up for drawing each curve. I just drew a line on my workbench, aligned it with the centerline on each silverware divider, and used the bench layout line to locate the point of my compass for drawing the radius. Cut the recesses out at your band saw, and sand the curves smooth.

Assembling the Tray, Adding Optional Parts

Sand all the parts you’ve made so far up to 180-grit. Then assemble the tray, applying glue to the corner rabbets, bottom grooves and dadoes for the cross divider. I used a band clamp to hold the parts securely. When you tighten it, be careful that the tray remains square; its diagonal measurements should match. I didn’t glue the silverware dividers or rear divider in place so those can be removed if my storage needs change. After the glue dried, I simply top-coated the tray with wipe-on poly to match the knife block.

One option for filling the tray’s rear compartment is with a steak knife holder. Making it is simple: I just cut 1/2″-deep kerfs for the knife blades across the face of a 3/4″ x 5″ x 6-3/4″ piece of scrap walnut. I spaced the knife-blade slots 3/4″ apart, with this spacing centered on the slots. The steak knife holder fits the tray if the rear divider is removed.

Not all steak knives will be long enough to fill the area that’s left for their handles beside the knife block. So, I cut a 3/4″ x 1″ x 5″ filler block and placed that behind the ends of the handles to prevent the knives from sliding out of their blade slots.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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The two-level design I’ve come up with here is relatively easy to build and offers a wide range of customization options. The dividers are made from a combination of 1/2″- and 3/4″-thick solid walnut and mounted on a 1/4″-thick Baltic birch plywood base. But you can choose just about any species of wood, mix and match multiple species or even use Baltic birch plywood for all the parts, if you like.

Cutting the Parts

Look at the the Drawings and Material List to familiarize yourself with the knife block’s design and pieces. Start construction by ripping enough 2-1/4″-wide stock to make the bottom inside and outside dividers.

Then rip 1-3/8″-wide pieces for the top dividers and handle rest. Crosscut the bottom dividers, top dividers and handle rest parts 1/4″ longer than necessary for now.

Shaping the Dividers and Rest

Face-glue three pairs of bottom inside dividers together, and do the same for the two handle rest parts. Carefully align their edges and ends flush. When the glue dries, unclamp and crosscut the parts to final length.

Now grab your compass to lay out a 1-5/16″ radius on the sides of the top dividers and a 3-3/4″ radius on the sides of the bottom dividers. Then, use a band saw or jigsaw to cut just outside the layout line on each divider.

I clamped the top dividers into a single group and did the same for the bottom dividers so I could sand their curves to the layout lines all at once. Next, use a hand plane, file or sanding block to shape a slight radius on the top of the handle rest. When that’s done, sand all the knife block parts to 180-grit.

Assembling the Knife Block

Cut the plywood base to size as well as seven spacers for the top and bottom dividers from 1/4″-thick scrap. Place the bottom dividers upside down and insert spacers between them, aligning the back ends of all pieces. The spacers are narrower than the dividers to prevent them from contacting the base when the dividers are installed.

Clamp the dividers and spacers together. Apply a thin layer of glue to the bottom edges of the dividers only. Then flip the divider-and-spacer assembly over and clamp it to the base.

When that glue-up dries, remove the clamps and spacers. Repeat the assembly process to install the top dividers. Glue and mount the handle rest to the base where it best suits the handles of your knives.

Finally, lightly sand all surfaces with 220-grit paper and apply a wipe-on poly finish to all surfaces. It will be foodsafe once the finish completely cures.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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That’s exactly what we’ve done here with this sofa armrest table. It started out as a roughly 10″-wide x 30″-long slab of 3/4″-thick walnut. You can find similar slabs at Rockler stores or many hardwood lumber vendors these days. The dark brown heartwood, separated by stripes of walnut’s cream-colored sapwood, can’t help but call attention to itself! And wrapping the slab around the armrest of a sofa not only makes it a conversation piece but also a super handy place to park a coffee cup, your smart device, a bowl of snacks or the game controller you’re using at the moment.

You won’t need a lot of power tools to build this project. It requires the use of a table saw or track saw to make various cuts, Rockler’s Corner Key Doweling Jig to reinforce the miter joints, a drill/driver and a random orbit sander. A tape measure, combination square, several F-style bar clamps and a means of cutting the dowels flush (we used an oscillating multitool, but a flush-cut saw will work fine, too) are about all you’ll need for hand tools.

Cutting the Miter Joints

The sofa shown here has armrests that are about 6-1/2″ wide. So, after crosscutting the ends of the slab square, we found its center point and drew a layout line across it. Then we drew a pair of parallel layout lines across the slab that each were 4-3/4″ away from the center line. Those established the top corners of the table’s top panel; if you draw a 45-degree line back from these layout lines on what would be the edge of the slab, the “bottom” length of this top panel is 8″ — an easy fit over many sofa arms. But be sure to measure the armrest width of your sofa and adjust the length of the top panel accordingly, if needed.

It’s imperative that the slab be held securely when cutting the top panel free of the two side panels, and this becomes trickier if your slab has very irregular edges. One way to do it is by setting the slab on a crosscut sled, aligning the edge of the sled with each of the cutting lines on the slab and miter-cutting them at 45 degrees with the slab clamped to the sled. You could also tip a track saw to 45 degrees and align the edge of the track to follow each cutting line, then cut the top panel free from the rest of the slab that way. A miter saw could be another option, but it will only work safely if both edges of the slab are flat and parallel so you can set them against the saw fence for cutting.

You now need to miter-cut the edges of the two side panels that were abutting the top panel to 45 degrees. Line these cuts up carefully so all you are doing is trimming off the mitered waste but not shortening the side panels in the process. That way, when the table is assembled, the slab’s grain pattern will wrap around the armrest in a continuous “waterfall” style.

With the miter cuts behind you, set the top and side panels together to check that the miter joints form 90-degree corners. Now is also a good time to verify that the length of the side panels will allow the table to sit flat on the top of the armrest without being obstructed by the seat cushions. Shorten the bottoms of the side panels if they are too long for your sofa. Then give the faces of the three panels a finish-sanding up to 180-grit or higher.

Assembling the Table

Rockler’s Corner Key Doweling Jig enables you to drive dowels in three different diameters diagonally across miter joints. It reinforces them with a mechanical connection that makes the joints significantly stronger. The dowel ends show through the faces of the joints as ovals, which adds a decorative detail. We followed Rockler’s instructions to set our jig up for drilling 3/8″-diameter dowel holes here. The jig enables you to adjust the position of the dowels within the joint, and we located them to be centered on the joint thickness.

Both members of a mitered corner are clamped together inside the jig, so you can drill each dowel hole completely through the joint in a single pass. We positioned the dowels for our table about 1-3/16″ in from the front and back edges of the joints, but you could locate them anywhere you like. Same goes for how many dowels you choose to insert in the joints. We think two look good for this project because the walnut dowels we usedcontrast nicely with the light-colored sapwood. But you can use as many dowels as you like.

When you drill the holes, don’t try to drill all the way through at once. Drill partway, back the bit out to clear the accumulating chips and then drill some more, letting the drill and bit do the work. Ease up on your hand pressure on the drill when the tip of the bit begins to poke through the other side, to avoid punching it through the joint face and potentially tearing out the surface. The cleaner the exit holes are, the better the dowel details will look!

It’s time to round up several bar clamps so you can assemble your table! Since the dowels will hold the joints together, that’s a pretty easy process to do. We spread glue along the mitered edges of one joint, set the top panel and side panel together and inserted a length of dowel into one of the glued dowel holes.

Leave the dowels overly long for now so you can continue to install dowels in the remaining hole or holes of the first joint, then repeat the process for the second joint. Install clamps on the table to pull the joints closed, and wipe off any glue squeeze-out before it begins to cure. Allow the joints to dry for at least eight hours.

Finishing Up

When the clamps come off, trim the ends of the dowels flush with the faces of the panels. Then give the dowel areas another round of careful sanding to smooth them until you can’t detect their ends by feel from the surrounding wood.

Walnut with sapwood like this is too pretty to cover with stain, so we decided to keep the wood’s color as natural as possible. You can enhance the color and grain pattern, however, by wiping on a liberal coat of boiled linseed oil. Wipe off the excess completely, and give the oil at least a full 24 hours to dry. Then topcoat with oil-based polyurethane in a sheen you prefer — we used satin. The poly will give this project a durable, waterproof surface. Rub out any imperfections, and apply a second coat. When that dries, it’s ready for use on your sofa!

Click Here to Download the Drawing and Materials List.

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When building small projects that you want to really make a statement, material selection is one essential key. Perhaps wenge is not a lumber you find attractive. If so, this wine cabinet would look amazing if made of bird’s eye, clouded big leaf or fiddleback maple. Highly figured walnut or quartersawn mahogany would also be good choices. The point is that if the design is basic, the “wow” factor must come from the beauty the wood provides. Then the hardware will enhance the whole. In a simple project, the details will carry the day. In this case, the curly cherry plywood back and the green felt lining add much to the whole, too.

First Things First

Whatever species of lumber you choose, select your most attractive pieces for the sides and the door. As always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but being intentional about these choices will pay dividends in the long run.

Rip the sides to width and then crosscut them to length. We did both on the table saw, but you could cut them to length using a miter saw as well. The dimensions provided in the Material List will accommodate most wine bottles, but if you have specific bottles in mind, measure them to make sure they will fit, and adjust accordingly if needed. With that step done, go ahead and cut the top and bottom pieces to size as well.

We cut out each of these parts from lumber wide enough that we did not have to glue up pieces for the sides, top and bottom.

That was not true for the door. We used 3/4″ x 5″ x 24″ wenge lumber, sourced from Rockler Woodworking and Hardware. The door needs to be just a little shy of 10″ wide, so that required a center glue joint. It was our preference that the door panel look as if it were formed from a single piece of stock, so we took care to match the figure and the color of the two pieces. Joint the mating edges so that they fit together well. Use Titebond III (its darker hue is helpful here), clamp them together and leave them in the clamps overnight. If you are using wenge like we did, that extra clamping time is important because glue joints in wenge can be fussy.

With the door still in clamps to allow the glue to cure, grab the sides, bottom and top. Go ahead and sand them up to 100 grit, then step over to the router table. The top and bottom pieces require an ogee shape on both faces of their forward edge. All the pieces need 1/4″ x 1/4″ rabbets on their inside edges.

Chuck the ogee bit into the router table and set up the cut on scrap lumber. The shape should leave about a 3/8″ flat area between the two ogees. Again, if you are using wenge, move the pieces slowly across the bit. Wenge can be brittle, and tearouts are common. You may even wish to consider a climb cut to avoid trouble. You can certainly choose another edge shape rather than an ogee, but keep the depth of the shape around 1/4″ to align with the edge of the door.

Next, chuck a 1/2″-diameter straight bit into the router table. Set the cut to form a 1/4″ x 1/4″ rabbet, checking the setup on scrap lumber. On the sides, rout the rabbet the full length of each piece. Stop the rabbets on the top.

Dowels and Dowel Points

The next step is to join the carcass pieces together. We used dowels to strengthen the joints. In hindsight, biscuits might have been a better choice. There are carefully to length. Next, go ahead and sand the door smooth up through 320- grit. We chose Odie’s Oil for the finish, and with that product, the smoother the better. (It’s another important detail in taking a cabinet like this to the next level.)

When the glue has cured on the carcass, chisel off any glue squeeze-out and sand the carcass up to the 320-grit level as well. (You may wish to install the hinges first, then remove them and do your final sanding.)

Install and then remove the door pull and the feet, then apply the Odie’s Oil. Note that with this hard wax oil, a little goes a long, long way.

Once the finish dries, put the felt pad in the carcass and attach the plywood back. Put a drop of CA glue into the holes where you mount the feet and secure them. Rehang the door with its pull, and you are ready to grab a couple of wine bottles. Enjoy the cabinet, oh … and the wine too!

Click Here to Download the Drawing and Materials List.

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A quick Internet search will reveal that there are many Crokinole boards for sale (some for nearly $400!) and a variety of accessories. But one reason I think that this game is gaining in popularity is that with a basic board and your game pieces (we found ours on Amazon), you will be set up for hours of fun.

The game can be played with two or four people. There are variations of play, too — each player for themselves or as teams. You play seated at a table, and one of the more interesting rules is that once you sit down, you may not move your chair from side to side. While the game is a bit complicated to explain in a sentence or two, you basically try to score by flicking your pieces into a specific spot or reduce your opponent’s score by bonking their pieces out of scoring position … or by doing both at the same time. Yep, it’s fun!

Crokinole: Finger-flicking Fun

Crokinole is unmistakably a Canadian creation, and its origin likely came about in Ontario in the 1860s. The game evidently blends components of English, French, German and even East Indian games (most likely pub games). There are regional variants to the game, and it became very popular in the 1950s with league competition common in both large and small towns. You can download rules to the game here.

Making the Base

Our board has a hardwood base or frame onto which we glue the actual plywood gameboard. I started out by making an octagon from walnut segments. This effort is a bit of addition by subtraction, as I eventually routed away most of the walnut material. And that’s the reason I did not use biscuits or dowels to help reinforce the octagon frame: they would be exposed by the subsequent machining. Glue the pieces together and use a band clamp to apply sufficient pressure as the glue cures. As you are basically gluing end grain to end grain, allow the glue to cure fully, and do not treat the subassembly roughly. You don’t want to break those glue joints.

To facilitate shaping the frame, use MDF or something similar to make blocking that holds the frame securely as you remove material with your router. Screw the blocking to a work surface or sacrificial board.

I chose to use a cordless DEWALT router mounted to Rockler’s circle-cutting jig to cut the walnut octagon round. The jig’s adjustability is key to making this project. You can quickly change the diameter with the twist of a knob. Because you will be not only cutting the frame round but also nibbling out a trough into the hardwood, that quick adjustability makes this task much more fun.

Find the exact center of the octagon/blocking setup and mount the circle jig right there. With a 1/4″-diameter straight bit chucked into the router, start out by cutting the frame round. Make a series of shallow cuts to keep the process manageable.

Switch to a 1/2″ straight bit to form the trough by removing more material in a series of cuts. See the Drawings for details. While my cordless router is not super powerful, by taking my time with shallow repeated cuts, it worked really well.

Building the Board

Next up is the gameboard. Made from 1/2″ birch plywood, it’s a round disc that has a bit of colored inlay and eight pegs mounted into the surface.

Start out with a 24″ x 24″ piece of plywood. Find its exact center and then go ahead and grab — you guessed it — your circle-cutting jig again Chuck a 1/8″-diameter straight bit into the router and set it to make a 1/8″-deep cut. You’ll be plowing circular grooves into the surface of the wood. Set the diameter of each circle according to the Drawings. Rout the grooves and then remove the circle-cutting jig for now.

We have a free downloadable PDF template that you can print out for the next step. Use it to lay out the locations of the peg holes as well as the straight grooves that connect the two outer circles. Those straight lines will form the playing quadrants when they get the dark wood filler put in them.

Use an awl to punch divots in the center of each peg hole; they will help you start the drill bit accurately. I used Rockler’s portable drill guide and a 3/8″ brad-point drill bit to bore the eight peg holes. Gently engage the brad-point bit onto the surface of the plywood to limit tearout.

With that taken care of, clamp a straightedge to the gameboard, as shown in the photo above. Use it to guide the router as it cuts the straight connecting grooves. Be careful not to rout past the circle grooves, which would look unsightly. With all those tasks in the rearview mirror, it’s time to make use of the circle-cutting jig one more time.

Reattach it to the center of the gameboard, and as you did with the octagon frame, rout the circle free from the square plywood sheet. Take several deepening passes to form the circle. Finally, use a 1-3/8”-diameter Forstner bit to bore the shallow center hole.

Making it Slippery Smooth

Central to the game of Crokinole is flicking the playing pieces across the board to various scoring positions. So it makes perfect sense that the more slippery the surface is, the better the game pieces will slide. Here’s how I went about getting a super-smooth finish on the piece.

First, I gently sanded the gameboard, starting with 150-grit and working up to 220-grit abrasives. Then I applied two coats of lacquer sanding sealer from an aerosol can. When that cured, I sanded it gently with 320- and then 400-grit sandpaper. At that point, I sprayed on another coat of sanding sealer. With the surface well-sealed and smooth, I loaded the grooves with Wunderfil Wood Filler tinted with black dye. After the first application, I sanded the waste away. The filler had shrunk enough that I leveled the grooves off with more filler. Then I sanded the surface with 320-grit paper to remove any excess. One more coat of sanding sealer and then two coats of high-gloss lacquer, again from a rattle can, completed the gameboard’s finish coat.

Now to glue the frame onto the gameboard. As you can see in the image at bottom right, I got creative regarding how to apply pressure to this broad glue joint. When that’s done, carefully apply sanding sealer and lacquer to the walnut trough to finish it.

Cut a 3/8″-diameter walnut dowel into eight pegs. I stuck them into a piece of cardboard to hold them while I applied a spray finish. Glue them in place on the gameboard. After a couple of days, I applied a coat of paste wax to make the gameboard surface even more slippery, and I was done. You can find the rules to Crokinole online, and I recommend you watch some YouTube videos demonstrating how the game is played. Enjoy!

Click Here to Download the Template.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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This knife block will hold a typical set of kitchen cutlery — an 8″ chef knife, a serrated bread knife, a couple of smaller utility/paring knives and four steak knives, plus a sharpening steel and kitchen shears. If you have even more knives to store, you could always add more wedges or widen the block to accommodate three knives widthwise instead of two, as it’s laid out here. Feel free to modify the design to suit your needs.

Time for Some Tapering

The first order of business is to create the knife block’s seven primary wedges. I ripped my 8/4 cherry into long 3-5/8″-wide strips, flattened one face of each strip on the jointer and then ran them through the planer to create parallel faces. Try to keep this stock nearly a full 2″ thick. Then crosscut the workpieces into eight 10-1/4″-long blanks (one becomes a test piece).

The reason why it’s good to keep these wedge blanks nice and thick is that it will make them easier to clamp upright in your tapering jig for the next step — turning them into wedges. Start by marking a centerline along one edge of each blank, dividing it lengthwise. Now mark two taper lines on either side of the centerline that reduce the blanks from 1-3/8″ thick on one end to 1/2″ at the other end.

I used Rockler’s Small Parts Taper Jig retrofitted with a pair of Rockler’s long aluminum Hold Down Clamps I had on hand to cut the blanks into wedge shapes. The jig is small enough to accommodate blanks of this length, and the longer clamps pinned them down securely beside the jig’s fence to keep my hands safely clear of my band saw blade. After adjusting the taper jig’s fence to the correct angle, and setting it so that my blade would cut just to the waste side of the layout line, I sliced one face off of the test blank. Make any adjustments, if needed, then cut one face off the other seven blanks, too. After round one of these cuts, I flattened all the cut faces up to the layout lines with several passes on the jointer.

You’ll need to reset the taper jig to cut the second angled faces of the wedge blanks. I also reversed the direction of the blanks from the wide end oriented toward the back of my jig for the first cut to the narrow end of the blanks for the second cut. That arrangement enabled me to keep the majority of wedge shape positioned on top of the jig and securely clamped. When the second faces are cut, head back to the jointer again to flatten them further and remove any waste beyond the layout lines.

Preparing Thin Laminations

You’ll need eight 1/8″-thick “pinstripe” laminations for the knife block, and here’s how I approached the task. I first ripped and crosscut four 3-5/8″ x 10-1/4″ workpieces to size from my 4/4 wenge stock, then resawed them down the middle to produce eight blanks. I had hoped that these workpieces could have yielded three pinstripe layers per blank instead of just two, by making two resaw cuts instead of one, but a couple of test cuts on a scrap piece of wenge proved that cupping or bowing was going to be an issue when the stock was resawn really thin. So I abandoned that option in favor of one resaw cut per blank. Due to the variable nature of wood, sometimes we have to waste a little stock in order to come out ahead with the workpieces we actually need to make, and this was one of those occasions.

To bring those overly thick laminations down to their final 1/8″ dimension, I needed a way to send all eight through my thickness planer safely. A length of 3/4″ melamine shelf board was the ticket. Using double-sided carpet tape, I adhered all the wenge blanks to the melamine with their jointed faces down (and sawn faces up) so the shelf could act as a carrier board through the planer. It’s never safe to feed stock much thinnerthan about 3/8″ through a surface planer by itself, because at some point it becomes too thin to remain flat. Pressure from the feed rollers could cause the end of the stock to bow upward, get caught in the planer’s cutterhead and shatter — not what you want to have happen! Several passes of the carrier board through the planer reduced the wenge to 1/8″ in a safe and controlled fashion. Just don’t skimp on the tape, and keep each planing pass relatively light, skimming off material in shallow passes.

Once the wenge was pried free of the carrier board, I removed all traces of the tape adhesive, then glued a “pinstripe” layer to one face of six of the wedges. For the seventh wedge that would become the top of the knife block, I glued a wenge layer to both faces instead.

Laying Out and Routing Knife Slots

Except for a couple of larger slots that will be required to store a sharpening steel (it’s a 7/16″-square slot for mine) and shears (that one is 5/8″ x 1-1/8″ for the one in my knife set), all the knife slots need only be 1/8″ tall to accommodate typical knife blade Their widths will vary, based on the specific knife styles you own. I routed all the knife slots into the wenge layers only. For the sharpening steel and shears slots, I centered them on the wenge layers and extended the openings into the cherry wedges above and below evenly.

Lay out a slot for each knife on the ends of the wedges. Determine a slot arrangement that maximizes space and groups like knives together. Plan for two knives per pinstripe layer when possible, but keep in mind that the wenge that remains in between and outside of the blade slots is the only material that will glue one wedge to the next.

To rout the knife slots, I used a 3/8″ straight bit, raised 1/8″ above the table. My router table fence guided each of these groove cuts, with the slots extending the full length of the wedges. Try to group your routing passes to take advantage of the same fence setting when you can, even if that means routing a couple of passes on one wedge, then jumping to another wedge out of sequence. It will add efficiency to the whole process. Also, be mindful of the following safety rule: When you’re widening a groove that requires more than one routing pass, set up your cuts so that each pass after the first requires you to move the fence backward, away from the bit. That way, the bit will continue to remove material against its rotation on the side of the slot closest to you (in front). If you find yourself needing to move the fence toward the bit instead, you’ll be cutting the back side of the slot and with the bit’s rotation, which is unsafe. That’s a climb cut situation, and it could cause the bit to grab the stock and pull it through at great speed, potentially resulting in a loss of your control over it.

Gluing up the Wedges, One Joint at a Time

Wedge-shaped workpieces are difficult to glue together, because it’s challenging to apply clamping force uniformly. Here’s how I made the process easier for this situation. I used a strap clamp around the entire assembly, and I glued only two wedges together at a time. If you try to glue all seven at once, they’ll invariably slide out of registration with one another when you tighten the clamps, and the glue is still acting as a lubricant before it tacks up.

I also fashioned a couple of angled scrap blocks and taped them to the jaw faces of a long F-style clamp. That way, the clamp could apply lateral pressure across the wide end of the block where the strap clamp seemed to offer the least effective pressure. I also found it helpful to install a couple more bar clamps at the joints between the first/second and sixth/seventh wedges. These joints often wanted to slide out of alignment, but the clamps prevented that from happening. If the faces of the wedges/pinstripes are flat, it doesn’t take Herculean force to create tight glue seams, but a few well-placed clamps sure helps.

Final Block Shaping

Once all the wedges are assembled and the glue is dry, flatten the faces of your knife block and bring its overall width down to 3-1/2″, either by sending it through your thickness planer or with a hand plane, as I did.

The narrow and wide ends of the block also probably will have small misalignments between the layers, but no worries. Just use a flexible batten or trammel points to draw two radii on the blank — one near the narrow end and one at the wide end.

I set the overall length of my knife block at 9-3/4″, using radii of 8-1/4″ and 18″ to create concentric curves. Trim off the excess ends of the block at the band saw, then smooth the cuts with a curved sanding block or on a spindle sander with a large-diameter spindle. I also eased all the sharp edges of the knife block with a 1/8″ roundover bit in a handheld router. I touched up these little details with some hand-sanding.

Adding Feet and a Renewable Finish

A couple of feet underneath your knife block will make it even more tip-resistant, lift it slightly up off the counter and add an attractive design element. Using a 3/4″-wide dado blade in your table saw, raised to 5/8″, plow a pair of dadoes across the bottom wedge.

I located these cuts 1-3/8″ in from each end of the block. The feet are simply 5″-long “sticks” of 3/4″ x 3/4″ wenge, with their top corners cut and sanded to 5/8″ radii.

Center the feet lengthwise in the dadoes so they extend out evenly on both sides. Attach each foot to the blank with a single #8 x 1-1/2″ flathead wood screw driven into a countersunk pilot hole.

Any oil/varnish blend would be a good choice for finishing this knife block because it will enhance the color of the wood while also adding a degree of protection from cooking spatters and spills. I wiped on three coats, allowing each coat to dry thoroughly before reapplying. Once the finish cures, this attractive kitchen accent is ready to display your cutlery in style!

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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However, in our home, making something practical is also very important. I try to live by the motto, “if it’s going to be in the kitchen, we better use it.” (Just don’t look at my drawer full of BBQ tools … Yes, I need all those turners and tongs!) But I think I’ve reached a happy medium here. This round cutting board with a multi-species laminated accent is both fun to make and practical as can be.

Let’s Get Rolling

I started by selecting a color scheme and decided to make most of the cutting board from walnut with a bold accent of maple, cherry, mahogany and padauk. These colors work great in our kitchen and really make the cutting board pop! But just about any close-grained hardwoods would be great choices for this board. There are no rules here; my picks were entirely subjective, and my wife really liked the colors. Which supports another motto worth remembering: “Happy wife, happy life!”

Ripping Along

This project really gave my table saw a workout. I got started by crosscutting my pieces of walnut into roughly 16″ lengths and then ripped them to 1-1/8″ wide. My goal for this board was to end up just a bit proud of 1″ in thickness, so giving myself that extra 1/8″ for flattening and sanding turned out to be helpful.

To glue up the accent strip, I put a thin coating of glue on the faces that would be touching. I grabbed a couple of 2x4s to use as clamping cauls to provide even pressure.

I reached for my bottle of Titebond III for this lamination. The “green” label is the right choice here, because it’s a waterproof formulation and is FDA-approved for indirect food contact.

Once it had time to fully cure, I scraped away the extra glue squeeze-out and headed to the miter saw to cut it into some angled pieces. I swiveled my saw table to 22.5 degrees and, using a piece of tape and a marker, scribed a registration line on the saw’s fence 1-1/8″ away from the blade.

I cut 10 pieces to this length with the lamination laying on the saw table so its glue lines were facing up. Now back to that sandwich!

As you can see in the Drawings, I captured the angled pieces between the two maple strips. To glue the maple and the angled accent pieces together, I applied glue to one face of each maple strip and to the angled ends of the multicolored pieces, then sandwiched them all together. I was concerned that too much clamping force would cause this multi-piece glue-up to shift around before the glue had time to tack up. So, spring clamps to the rescue! I used enough clamps to apply adequate pressure but not to ruin their alignment.

While the glue was drying, I started to prepare for gluing up the whole board. I did a dry-fit of all the pieces and was satisfied with the results — it was going to work fine. Then I got busy applying glue to the pieces. After I had assembled about two thirds of the walnut into a blank, I glued in the accent strip and then finished up with the remaining walnut on the opposite side of the accent.

I used a pair of Rockler’s Mini Deluxe Panel Clamps to provide the clamping pressure. They’re designed to both squeeze a panel together and also keep its laminations flush — perfect for this application!

Cutting and Shaping Comes Next

It’s always a good idea to give the glue on complicated laminations plenty of time to cure, so I let mine dry overnight. Removing the board from the clamps, I was pleased to find that it required minimal flattening. And that was good because I had more work to do.

I got started back at the table saw squaring up its ends. While this board would have worked well as a square, I want something different, so I settled on a circle!

Before I got too excited and cut it round, I wanted to use a new 4-in-1 Cutting Board Handle Routing Template from Rockler. The template has four different handle shapes and takes the effort out of forming cutouts.

Simply register the template and remove the material with a router, making use of a guide bushing and 3/8″ spiral bit. I decided on the square cutout to pay homage to all the other square cutting boards in the world, and I think the square hole in a round object makes the choice a bit comical, too.

Then it was time to cut the board round. There are many ways to do this, but let me show you my preferred method. I started with my router attached to a circle-cutting jig and made a very shallow cut along the bottom of the board so I could see where the circle was going to be.

I set the jig for a 14″ diameter. I made a few more passes, routing to about 3/8″ deep. Then I took the board over to the band saw and completed the circular cut I had started. My last step was to skim off the remaining band saw waste with a flush-trim router bit.

Wrapping Up Some Final Details

A round cutting board with sharp edges just seems incomplete to me. So, I eased the outer edges of the circle with a 3/8″-radius roundover bit in the router and switched to a 1/4″ roundover for softening the edges of the handle cutout. I think the combination of profiles adds a nice detail.

Even though my board was sufficiently flat, it still needed more final sanding So, I worked up through the grits to 320 to give all of its surfaces a silky smooth feel. A couple coats of food-safe Walrus Oil Cutting Board Oil made it even smoother, and the oil really highlights this project’s many wood colors.

My favorite little feet are some 3/8″ soft bumpers that install in drilled holes in the bottom face. I mounted eight of them to prevent any tipping when I’m slicing tomatoes for my next BLT. And with that, my new cutting board was ready for use.

If you make one of these boards too, be sure to only wash it by hand and not in the dishwasher. When the board eventually looks dull and dry, clean it thoroughly and then apply a fresh coat of oil. Simple as that! I’m off to make a sandwich.

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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Click Here to Download the Plan.

Check out the video of the process.

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In the version that our art director, Jeff Jacobson, came up with here, there are three scoring options: a rhombus-shaped area that is worth negative-one point, a central hole that is worth one point and a smaller-diameter upper hole that is worth two points. Keeping score will require addition and subtraction, which will be great practice for kids. And the variety of scoring options will mean a more unpredictable and more competitive game. Jeff came up with the concept by thinking about the skee-ball arcade games of his misspent youth.

Starting with a Template for Accuracy

This is a perfect project for a template. You are making multiple holes through the plywood, and they all need to be placed accurately. In addition, these two game boards need to be identical. And as sometimes happens, when your friends or family members play the game, they might want one of their own. With a master template, you can get them done in short order.

I made my template from 3/8″ MDF cut to 14″ wide and 24″ long. Then I began to mark out the various shapes and holes that I would cut out to guide my router. Look at the Drawings for all of these details. I began by scribing a line down the center of the blank along its length. Then I drew a line across the width of the MDF at the center point of the handles. These two axes then allowed me to accurately locate all of the remaining details.

An important consideration here is how you are going to cut out those holes on the actual game boards. If you are going to simply trace the shapes onto the plywood and then cut out the openings with a handheld jigsaw, then create the template so that the marks you transfer to the plywood are exactly the size shown on the Drawings. If you are going to, as I did, rout out the openings and the curved sides, then figure out the off set of the rub collar you will be using. I used a 1/4″ bit in a 3/8″ O.D. rub collar. That left 1/16″ off set between the bit and the edge of the collar.

For that reason, I marked the diameter of the holes 1/8″ larger than the final openings. (Although I must confess that we are not talking rocket surgery here, the size of the holes can vary a bit and you’ll still have a usable game.) I only shaped one edge of the template and cut out one handle opening. I flipped the template over to form the second edge and the second handle hole on each board, which helped make the boards identical. I cut out the template openings and the curved shape of the edge with a handheld jigsaw.

Making the Game Boards

Start out by cutting three pieces of 1/2″ plywood to 14″ x 24″. Place a sacrificial board (I used some scrap plywood) on your workbench. Then put the plywood blank down and clamp the template over the top of it. Their edges should match exactly. Go ahead and cut out the openings with your plunge router, making two roughly 1/4″-deep passes. When you have finished machining both game boards, grab the third piece of plywood and rout it into the shape of a game board, but without any of the openings. Then cut off 9″ from each end to make the backer boards. They get mounted behind the rhombus-shaped openings to close those holes.

There are two leg mounting blocks yet to be made. They are 1-1/2″ x 1-1/4″ x 12″ in size and can be made of solid wood, or as I did, laminated up from three pieces of the 1/2″ plywood I had been using for this project. When you’ve made those pieces you need to drill 19/64″-diameter holes to mount the T-nuts in. See the Drawings for the hole locations. Pound the T-nuts home.

Adding Legs and Final Details

Just a few more things to consider and do before you are done. First, how are you going to finish the game? We chose to paint it white with bright accent colors. It just seemed right. But you could apply a clear finish and be happy with that. It’s up to you.

With that determined, go ahead and cut the legs to length from 1-1/4″-diameter dowel stock. Drill a hole in one end and screw a hanger bolt into the hole. If you are painting the legs, now is the time.

Mount the backer board behind the rhombus opening with screws driven in from the back. Secure the leg-mounting block to the game board with screws driven in from the top of the board. And with that your project is completed. Set the game up, prepare for some basic addition and subtraction and get started with the fun!

Hard-to-Find Hardware:

1/2″ American Birch Plywood, 24″W x 48″L (1) #62379
1/4″-20 x 1-1⁄2″ Hanger Bolts, 8 pack (1) #24406
T Nuts 1/4″ (#20), 8 Pack (1) #26054
Dowel Rod – Birch – 36″ x 1-1/4″ (1) #20800

Click Here to Download the Drawings and Materials List.

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