I needed a present for a family wedding and I decided that a barbecue (bbq? Which do you prefer?) platter would be a nice option.
They are similar to cutting boards, but I make them thinner, as they don't need to be that thick to carry a grilled steak inside from the barbecue! I also add a "juice groove" to hold the juices.
This gives me an excellent excuse to clean up all those skinny too-nice-to-throw-out wood scraps. And once you set up to make one, you might as well make two or three.
First, Gather the scraps!
From left to right, ROUGHLY, I've got Ash, White Oak, Padauk, Teak, More Padauk, More White Oak, More Walnut, More Ash, Cherry, and Maple. I love putting different strips together!
I arrange all the strips in a pleasing manner and start gluing them up. These boards were all mostly symmetric, but that is not a hard and fast rule. All the thin strips make it more complicated to glue up, but the result is worth it.
Lots of planing
All my wood was varying thicknesses, so I had a lot of planing to do to bring the boards down to a nice thickness. I make my BBQ platters fairly thin -- roughly 1/2" thick, or maybe a bit thicker. Remember, these are not intended to be cutting boards! I use these just to bring the meat in from the barbecue after grilling. So they do not need to be thick
An important touch are the juice grooves to catch and hold the meat juices. Typically I would make a template and use a template routing bing to cut the grooves. But then all your bbq platters need to be the exact same size. Instead I experimented with freehanding it on scrap and it seemed to work. Yes, I'm taking a chance that I will slip when going around the corner, but hey, I'm a woodworker, I could fix it! But I did not slip. I just when slow and kept a solid grip on the router, keeping firm pressure against the edge of the wood, and being very careful at the corners.
I ended up making three. I use Clapham's Salad bowl finish on my BBQ platters and on my Cutting boards. It's totally food safe: a mix of mineral oil and beeswax. Smells like honey when you wipe it on.
drain notch
I filed in a small notch in one of the corners. This is an experiment for me -- the idea is that here is a place where we can drain the meat juices, if needed.
Another view of all of my boards from this batch.
You can also watch the build on youtube if you want more details!
https://youtu.be/j_NysM2lC7M
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