Year of the Chopping Board

I've been woodworking and selling the things I make for a number of years now.

My original goal was to create products that were different than the usual things woodworkers make – such as coffee tables, turned bowls, goblets and chopping boards.

So I got busy and created designer Mobile Phone Stands, Headphone Stands, EDC trays, Edison lamps, wood handled Meat Cleavers and more. These took me weeks and sometimes months to design, problem solve and eventually finish a single item; which I could then sell for between $30 - $90 (what the market was prepared to pay).

And do you know what happened? Nobody cared...

On the other hand, my Father has been making wooden Chopping Boards (or Cutting boards as the Americans call them) for at least 10 years and has built up a regular stable of customers, who love his boards and keep coming back for more. Some say they're too good to actually mark with a knife and use them for display purposes only. Others even go so far as to hang them on the wall as works of art!

Interestingly, Dad used to create other things as well. He made some amazing full sized mirrors and custom picture frames. But now...all he makes is boards – 100's of them.

I've been selling boards of behalf of my Father (for a small commission), as he doesn't have an online store and I figured it would compliment the products I make and add extra stock to my website – remembering that my output is probably at the rate of one finished product every few weeks.

During the lead up to Christmas last year, do you know what my biggest seller was? Dad's Chopping Boards.

This made me realise what's probably been staring me in the face the whole time...I should be making Chopping Boards…

My more ambitious projects were put off to the side and I made the New Year's resolution - 2023 will be the Year of the Chopping Board (not to be confused the with the Chinese Year of the Rabbit)

As it turns out, I've discovered making boards can be quite fun. You don't have to follow a strict set of rules and make them the same as everyone else. It's like a puzzle, pairing different species of wood together for a pleasing colour pallet. Plus my other insight was; with Dad's boards, I constantly had people asking me if I had anything in a bigger size. So I only make large boards.

Some of my new boards have sold within 24 hours. The plan seems to be working.

One of the reasons I think nice handmade boards are in demand, is partly due to the poor offerings at New Zealand's big box stores – The Mitre 10's, Briscoes, The Warehouse, et al. Yes they sell wooden Chopping Boards – however all of them are mass manufactured cheap imports made from either Bamboo (a dirty word in my family), Acacia, or Rubber wood.

It's a very limited choice, especially since New Zealand has a long history of using beautiful native timbers for its wood products.

And before you go all greeny on me and accuse me of cutting down native trees – which is perhaps a topic for another post. Most of my boards are made from odd sized pieces my Father has given me over the years. And recently I bought a half broken, 1970's Rimu chest of drawers from the recycle shop at the dump. Once re-sawn and sanded, it turned into beautiful wood again. Plus many old New Zealand homes were originally made with Kauri flooring – something that often ends up in demolition yards, to be replaced by veneer or vinyl fake wood flooring (wood-esque?).

So a chopping board can be both useful and good for recycling/up-cycling. Don't even get me started on plastic chopping boards.

At the other end of the scale from the cheap boards, there's the upmarket kitchen shops. As someone who like to cook, I occasionally pay them a visit. Just to moon over how the affluent live. For a foodie, it's the equivalent of visiting a Mercedes car showroom. On the outside, I'm admiring all the beautiful pots and pans and fancy appliances, but inside my head, I'm coughing and spluttering at the exorbitant prices. The Chopping Boards in these places, while made of nicer wood, are still mass manufactured (perhaps in somewhere like Australia) and retail for around $200 - $400 for a large board.

Back to me.

Many woodworkers begin their journey by making a few chopping boards, then move onto more challenging projects. I seem to have done this backwards – quite possibly because of my own stupid ego; thinking chopping boards were beneath my creativity. However, if I want to end up with a sustainable business, I need a core product that I can make in volume.

And, so here I am...giving the people what they want.