The Hibiscus Cutting Board
In my last post I talked about the TMNT Cutting Board, which was one of my first inlay cutting board designs created with the CNC machine. It was a really basic design, and an experimentation in fine detail. I wanted the next design to feature multiple colored woods, but still be a primarily basic cutting board to make.
I wanted to make something for my family members, and we have a strong connection to the Hawaiian islands, so I opted for a hibiscus flower theme. The original hibiscus image was created in Adobe Illustrator based off tracing some images. Then I used the basic flower image as a seed for some AI image generation to complete some of the fill in areas and generate some more variation. AI is good to get rough ideas, but I spent a solid two days working on the design before I began anything in the shop.
The base board is walnut end grain, glued up to about 1.5″ thick, 19″ wide and 12″ deep. End grain holds up a lot better to cutting, and is much easier to CNC machine a delicate design. The dark walnut should hold up well against stains; my light colored TMNT cutting board made from maple easily stains.
I imported the design into Autodesk Fusion and used my VCarve Inlay Plugin to create the actual inlay designs. This allowed me to digitally experiment with different wood combinations to find something I liked. The plugin is handy to generate setups and toolpaths for carving out the design. I settled on a combination of cherry for the reddish hibiscus part, and maple for the white leaves and ornaments. I enjoy sharing information, and I did a full video on how I created CAD and the CAM toolpaths .
I made two of these boards as gifts for my family. Both are nearly identical, and are finished with “Walrus Oil” brand cutting board oil, along with a little wax on top.
I also did a full build video on YouTube: Making the Hibiscus Cutting Board.
I have digital files available to purchase if you are interested in making this design: Digital Files – Hibiscus Cutting Board for CNC. I may also make a few more to post for sale on my site…but we’ll see if I ever get around to that!
