Recommendation? What cutting board should I get?

My wife has a Stella Falone ebony slab cutting board.
It's reversible. One side has a grove and the other doesn't.
Bob Taylor / Taylor Guitars started making them as an additional use of the wood farmed to make guitars.

It's held up pretty well, and is a beautiful addition to the kitchen.
Plus all her cutlery has ebony handles as well. 😎

I'm not saying it's the best option out there, but I do believe it's worthy of being mentioned here.
Thanks.
 
This thread is perfect. I’ve invested in a few Shun Cutlery knives and I’ve been researching the best cutting boards to get to use with them. I think I will go with maple. We had initially purchased acacia for a great deal but after reading through this thread and online I think maple end grain or not would be the softest and most forgiving for our knives.

Now, I just need to teach my fiancé how to properly use knives so we can use these knives for a lifetime lol. She’s learned it’s not good to scrape with the edge and has actually purchased a food scoop to use alongside when doing prep work so we’re headed in the right direction lol
 
Hyesouljah said:
This thread is perfect. I’ve invested in a few Shun Cutlery knives and I’ve been researching the best cutting boards to get to use with them. I think I will go with maple. We had initially purchased acacia for a great deal but after reading through this thread and online I think maple end grain or not would be the softest and most forgiving for our knives.
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Don’t let your life being ruled by online “experts”.

As i said repeatedly, true acacias are too hard. They are not used for cutting boards, unless custom made presentation boards.e sof
“Acacia” is used as a trade name for the monkeypod wood, which os much softer than maple.
For the Shun knives the acacia boards would be better, but the maple is acceptable too.
One advantage of the maple board would be that it won’t mar as much as the softer acacia.
Good luck with your new knives and cutting board.
 
littleknife said:
Don’t let your life being ruled by online “experts”.

As i said repeatedly, true acacias are too hard. They are not used for cutting boards, unless custom made presentation boards.e sof
“Acacia” is used as a trade name for the monkeypod wood, which os much softer than maple.
For the Shun knives the acacia boards would be better, but the maple is acceptable too.
One advantage of the maple board would be that it won’t mar as much as the softer acacia.
Good luck with your new knives and cutting board.
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Thank you. We’ve already purchased the acacia and I was thinking about returning them to find some maple but now I might not. There are lots of reviews stating those boards have warped and cracked so I’ll see what else I can find maybe

This is what we have

 
Hyesouljah, your cutting board is the soft monkeypod wood type, so it will be very edge friendly to your Shun knives.
The warping and cracking issues reported by some owners have more to do with the design of the board rather the type of wood used.
Your board is made of stripes of mostly edge grain wood glued together. The unavoidable expansion and shrinking upon repeated wetting and drying can cause uneven expansion and shrinking between the various strips, resulting in the warping and or cracking. I had a similar maple cutting board which after 10+ years of use cracked along several strips.
Monkeypod wood can have uneven, interlocking grain which can contribute to warping even on single piece , not glued boards.

Carefully arranged and well glued end grain boards are less likely to crack, but I have seen that too.

You can sometimes buy cheap and well made end grain acacia, maple, teak or rubberwood boards at Home Goods, TJ Maxx, Marshalls or Ross, which are worthy of consideration.
 
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End-grain ash and oak in my kitchen. No slot on the board, but a 1x1cm cut/bevel on the underside. Perfect for slipping in a thin board or plate, and then shovel off what is on the board. A thick and heavy cutting board is perfect for chopping, but not something to throw around while cooking, it´s pretty stationary where it is.
 
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GPyro said:
My wife has a Stella Falone ebony slab cutting board.
It's reversible. One side has a grove and the other doesn't.
Bob Taylor / Taylor Guitars started making them as an additional use of the wood farmed to make guitars.

It's held up pretty well, and is a beautiful addition to the kitchen.
Plus all her cutlery has ebony handles as well. 😎

I'm not saying it's the best option out there, but I do believe it's worthy of being mentioned here.
Thanks.
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Ebony is really nice on knife handles, but since it´s not that healthy to work with, I would not use it in the cutting board.
Teak and other dark, hard, heavy woods are often found to contain sand from where they grew. It dulls the tools...
 
mentalknife said:
Well "they" say a lot of things but there's never any actual evidence presented to validate the assertions. So. I tested it myself with several kinds of wood using basic non alloyed carbon steel of high hardness, shirogami #2, because thats the kind of steel that makes the most sense to use for this. Comparting the same wood made zero measurable difference in terms of how quickly it created dulling by any mechanism, but mostly abrasion, regardless of it being oriented to edge or end grain. Zero. So the conclusion is, end grain looks cool, and it's higher Maintenace, but in terms of supposed benefits a lot of people claim about them, I see zero evidence for it.
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End grain if preferred for knife throwing targets, because you never land across the grain. I assumed end grain cutting boards worked in a similar way.

I can’t argue with your results. Thanks for sharing.
 
Received our new cutting board today. End grain Dark Walnut made in Los Angeles by SonderLA. This thread was a great resource in helping me make my decision. I can’t wait to move in to our new place after the wedding and start putting our Shun Cutlery to use on this beautiful board and using this and the knives for decades to come. This board came with removable feet installed on both sides for added grip and it works very well.

IMG_6615.jpegIMG_6616.jpeg
 
Oh that`s a beautiful board Hyesouljah Hyesouljah it looks like my endgrain American walnut.
I got a bespoke one a couple of years ago and it`s practical and beautiful.
It is hard but not too hard and doesn`t show tomato stains like lighter coloured woods.

WALNUT-BOARD.jpg
 
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Barbababa said:
Ebony is really nice on knife handles, but since it´s not that healthy to work with, I would not use it in the cutting board.
Teak and other dark, hard, heavy woods are often found to contain sand from where they grew. It dulls the tools...
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?
Sand?
Alrighty.
🙄
 
The board should be as big as your largest knife to be used will at least lay across it diagonally and still have board under it. The width will take care of itself when choosing a board if you follow that one rule for size of cutting board. Professionally, I like a poly board, while at home I prefer a wooden one. Oak, maple, something domestic. Boos makes awesome boards. Hope this helps.
 
Not just my observation but Boos used to make awesome boards.
Now their quality control has significantly eroded.
For example they are not as well matched for grain pattern, colour and orientation as they should be for a premium board costing hundreds.
The woods are not properly seasoned and have too great a variance in water content so they`re not perfectly flat from new that shows uneven drying and poor quality control plus there are visible gaps between glued and clamped wood pieces plus they have failing reputation due to warping and splitting.
This is not only my view; there is a lot of bad feedback and dissatisfaction on Pro Chef boards (pun intended) and knife forums and shopping review sites from disgruntled customers that feel like they`ve been ripped off.
There is simply no excuse for shoddy workmanship from a high profile company that has been in the game for decades with multi million dollar resources.
Perhaps the staff need better training and/or the CNC lathes and thicknessers have poor tolerances like When Harley Davidson had crap lathes and uneven at best quality control and had to replace all their old American lathes with multi million dollar Japanese lathes with much higher tolerances because their reputation was going down the toilet.
Just as an example I bought a bespoke endgrain board from a guy (sole trader) in Bury in the North of England - near me for less than $100 and the quality leaves modern Boos boards for dead.Matched grain, well seasoned wood and nearly invisible block joins so no gaps and tolerances of more than a fiftieth of an inch which is tens of times better than a Boos board costing six times the price.
I know because I lived in Kokomo, IN with friends for quite a while and my friend bought a Boos board and she immediately sent it back for a full refund because it was overhyped, overpriced garbage.

Reputations have to be maintained and earned - that is a universal maxim.
 
I'm a cabinetmaker, and I make my own cutting boards. They are always soft maple, often just a slab of well-chosen quartersawn. I make them as big as I can. I dont see any benefit at all to having less cutting board when you could have more; stews and soups, salads, bruschetta, etc will fill a board with chopped stuff real fast. I soak with mineral oil (it's "butcher block oil" but half the price) and renew regularly. If i ever get ahold of some substantial sycamore, it will be totally dedicated to kitchen stuff - boards, spoons, tongs, whatever.

Countertop cutoffs make great cutting boards, if you know anybody who works with them. You could probably buy a soft-maple countertop with a few friends, and cut it up to everyones advantage, for the same price as what Boos charges these days.
I tell my friends to avoid bamboo and acacia because of silica content. Bamboo boards are mostly glue.

Edit - I'm curious at some of the endgrain vs edge grain diatribe in this thread. The differential wear on knife edges may be so insignificant that they may be treated the same in this particular instance, but they are certainly not the same, and they don't behave the same. If you don't believe me, go to your woodpile and split a log vertically along the grain. Then lay one on its side, and try to split it. We make rip saws and crosscut saws with different sets and different teeth for a reason. I have both endgrain and face grain boards in my kitchen right now; in my view, the advantage to endgrain is that it lasts longer without showing as much wear.
 
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Butchers have used endgrain for centuries for good reason.
You are not cutting across the fibres - you`re cutting between the fibres and the knife marks seal up to some extent if the board is well seasoned and maintained with mineral oil / board wax etc.
The only reason engineered bamboo ( which is a very hard grass ) is used and edgegrain is cost and speed/ease of manufacture.
 
Mike H765 said:
I’ve made 100’s of end grain cutting boards over the years. My favorite woods are cherry and walnut. Also use maple and mesquite. Here’s a couple I just made with cherry and walnut. Cherry is beautiful and gets darker and prettier with age. It should be less expensive than walnut(at least it is in my area). View attachment 2227947
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But, I think Acacia wood cutting boards probably would gain more popularity because of its durability.
 
mentalknife said:
[...]

Far as edge grain or end grain, it's an up hill thing because this is a claim that you see EVERYWHERE. Everyone makes that claim. Zero evidence for it. No one cares. Because it doesn't really matter, but anyone who has tested, as I have personally, so has Americas test kitchen, finds that it's not true. Sarcasm aside, I'm pretty sure America's Test Kitchen tested the same idea, quite "scientifically" actually (with a robot and microscope so you know it's legit lol), and they found it makes no difference in terms of edge wear either. For me, it's hard to believe that those with proclivity to accept assertions as fact in the absence of evidence are particularly rationally minded more generally. But appealing to authority is usually a decent strategy of making a convincing argument. I personally don't really care who believes what, I'm just going to put what I know to be true out there and folks can make their own minds. It's not really a big deal, just a thing which annoys me to no end. It's just accepted by people that end grain is "better on edges" than edge, and if you ask for evidence the only thing anyone can provide is very naive analogies with straws suggesting when you cut on an edge grain you cut into those, but on end grain you cut between them. Absurd to me that anyone would believe such obvious nonsense. When you cut on wood, you're cutting into the wood. That's all there is to it. Which I'd guess is why anyone that trys to measure the difference in abrasive wear to a knife edge between the two orientations of the same kind of wood finds the same result, which is no discernable difference.

[...]
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I've watched that ATK test as well. I have an edge grain board that I made well over 40 years ago, and it performs just as well as the end grain ones I've purchased since then. The end grain do look a little nicer, but I seriously doubt that there's a substantial difference. I suspect this end vs edge grain debate is largely along the lines of "it's always been done this way".

Either way, I like wood over plastic, even though plastic is a lot more convenient. Trying to get away from plastic as much as possible.
 
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