drip groove in cutting board

Grimmy2016

Administrator
Scott
Does anyone have a good method for putting a drip groove into a cutting board equidistant from the edge all the way around?

I was going to use my router table but not sure if thats a good idea since I cant see the cut edge. Something like this.

1589492317058.png
 

MarkE

Mark
Corporate Member
You can do it with a hand held router with a fence... if you are careful.

Personally, I think a drip groove is a waste of surface area. If I need to cut 'juicy' stuff, I just move the cutting board closer to the sink. YMMV.
 

mquan01

Mike
Corporate Member
You can do it with a hand held router with a fence... if you are careful.

Personally, I think a drip groove is a waste of surface area. If I need to cut 'juicy' stuff, I just move the cutting board closer to the sink. YMMV.

Thats how I do it also. I make one side with a groove (for meats) and the other side without(for everything but meat)
 

jlimey

Jeff
Corporate Member
I've had success with a core box bit inside a router template guide going around a mdf template. Not saying that it wasn't nerve wracking as I could have ruined a lot of work.
 

pcooper

Phillip Cooper
Corporate Member
Before my CNC I would create a template that fit the board and hand held router. I had to take small passes to keep from wandering but worked out well. The down side (my view) is the template is a single use thing unless you intend to make a bunch of the same thing, so if it's a single run, use scraps or something cheap for the template. I held the template on with two sided tape, or you could use clamps on sides and keep moving them. If you do two sided tape, make sure you use enough to keep the template on there as it'll jump off at the least opportune time.
 

Johnson

New User
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Core box bit in router.

I place the cutting board on a piece of MDF and screw a fence with spaceers into the MDF, locking the board into place. I put a full span spacer block between the fence and the board depending on where the blood groove is going to go to account for the distance between the plunge router base edge and the bit. Then I place the entire setup on sawhorses in the middle of my garage so I can move 360 degrees around the board when I'm routing the groove. This allows me to push evenly against the fence on each side of the cutting board, instead of pushing on half and pulling on the other. When I take the time building this style of jig for each individually sized board, it has never failed me. I have tried it using the fence on my router and it never comes out right. By locking a fence all the way around the board and then moving myself around the piece, the results are dead on. Typically 2-3 passes gets me where I need to be. I have done this with hard maple, purpleheart and walnut with no issues. Edge grain and end grain.

Very similar to the video that JOE SCHARLE posted above, but I don't get super fancy with the fence and spacers, just jointed and planed 2x4. This was necessary to get the height when putting a blood groove into a 3" end grain chopping block that I made for a chef friend of mine out of hard maple.
 

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