Not a Cutting Board! (BBQ Platters)

[Art Mulder]

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

[peter Joseph]

Very nicely done and very useful.

Fine work Art.

[Art Mulder]

Thank-you, Peter!

[Jay Jolliffe]

Nice boards Art....Gives me an Idea for all my scraps...

[glenn bradley]

Si. Bueno! I hate looking for a platter to take goods to and from the BBQ. Well Done and darn nice looking.

[Art Mulder]

Thanks for the kind words, Jay and Glenn!

[Art Mulder]

Mini follow up:


So the other night I decided to freshen up my own five year old bbq platter.
So I sanded and and LIGHTLY planed it — just a fractions of an inch to peel off the knife marks on the top.


Then I pulled out the router to deepen the juice notches — they’d always been too shallow and that was the main thing I wanted to fix.


And it all worked fine. I routed it all out nicely, and at the end I was backing up the router a bit just to make sure there was no rough bits in the groove and… well… something just went a bit astray on the last corner.


And honestly, it almost became firewood. After all, I still had two brand new platters sitting there. But I decided to see what I could do, so I clamped a board across the corner, and put a straight bit in the router and cleaned out the whole corner to a depth of almost 1/4”. Then since there was no hiding it, I decided to make it a “feature” and pulled out some scraps of padauk. (As in, they were pulled out of the burn box).





A little over 90 minutes later I pulled it out of the clamps and tried again with the router. (have I mentioned how padauk dust gets EVERYWHERE?) I then hit it with some of the salad bowl finish and bob’s yer uncle.





oh yeah, and tonight we tested it out and the little juice-draining notch works quite well. It’s not exactly a spout, but it does help guide the juices when you tip it to drain.

[Rick Moyer]

Mini follow up:


So the other night I decided to freshen up my own five year old bbq platter.
So I sanded and and LIGHTLY planed it — just a fractions of an inch to peel off the knife marks on the top.


Then I pulled out the router to deepen the juice notches — they’d always been too shallow and that was the main thing I wanted to fix.


And it all worked fine. I routed it all out nicely, and at the end I was backing up the router a bit just to make sure there was no rough bits in the groove and… well… something just went a bit astray on the last corner.


And honestly, it almost became firewood. After all, I still had two brand new platters sitting there. But I decided to see what I could do, so I clamped a board across the corner, and put a straight bit in the router and cleaned out the whole corner to a depth of almost 1/4”. Then since there was no hiding it, I decided to make it a “feature” and pulled out some scraps of padauk. (As in, they were pulled out of the burn box).





A little over 90 minutes later I pulled it out of the clamps and tried again with the router. (have I mentioned how padauk dust gets EVERYWHERE?) I then hit it with some of the salad bowl finish and bob’s yer uncle.





oh yeah, and tonight we tested it out and the little juice-draining notch works quite well. It’s not exactly a spout, but it does help guide the juices when you tip it to drain.

I was thinking when you originally said about draining it; what if you cut a small kerf and put a small spline near one of the corners. I would think this might act more like a spout for pouring off any liquid. Just a random thought.

[Rob Price]

Nice save on the corner. I think I need to make a few of these...

[Peter Follett]

Good call on the thin board! Who said cutting boards need to be thick? They work better as cutting/serving boards if they are thinner/lighter than the big, heavy endgrain boards.P1020340.jpg Here's one just over 1/2" thick that does very well going to the table.

[Robert Delhommer Sr]

Pretty! I like.