Cincinnati Reds Charcuterie Board

This board was made as a gift for my dad and Lisa — a Cincinnati Reds–themed charcuterie board built from edge-grain maple.

I started with rough 8/4 maple, milled it flat, and glued up a simple edge-grain panel sized for serving. The focus of the project was the inlay: an old-school Mr. Red logo that I found as an SVG and modified inside Shaper Studio before cutting on the Origin.

The logo was cut directly into the board and filled with UV epoxy. After curing, the excess epoxy was sanded flush before routing a soft edge profile around the perimeter.

This was my first time mixing, pouring, and working with epoxy in any meaningful way, and it came with a few lessons:

• Epoxy is extremely finicky.
• Pouring too deep in a single pass can cause curing issues.
• And absolutely do not run epoxy-filled work through a planer unless you want a catastrophic mess (or, if you’re lucky, large chunks chipping out and looking terrible).

After sanding through the grits, the board was finished with Big MAC’s Board Butter to keep things food-safe and simple.

It’s a straightforward project, but a meaningful one — a good excuse to learn something new and make a functional piece that’ll hopefully see a lot of use.