I’ve recently found a couple cool up-cycling projects at the swap shed at the transfer station. Someone discarded a nice maple edge-grain cutting board made by the Maine Department of Correction industries. Prisoners work on various projects that they then sell in their store. The board was pretty cut up and someone tried to clean it up a bit but they failed pretty bad. I was able to re-square and resurface it on my tools. I even added a juice groove. My wife loved this.

I also found a small cheese platter with a terrible warped base and nice glass dome. Because the board was stained and made of some unknown wood I decided to discard it and start over. I wanted this to be a little special so I decided to do my first end-grain cutting board out of Maple and Walnut in a checkerboard.. I cut it into a circle on my CNC machine and finished it with a beeswax blend. This should give years of service down the road and looks beautiful to boot.