As with any board in which the grain runs vertically, “a knife does less damage to the wood than on a flat-grain board,” Tom says.Ĭutting boards make great gifts. When assembled into a board, they fool the eye into seeing three dimensions. Tom and Kevin cut and glued together wood strips into identical rhombus shapes, then sliced them into six-sided pucks. Three woods of contrasting colors give the board its intriguing appearance: maple, oak, and cherry sourced from a hardwood lumber dealer. You can get it, eventually, with a metal protractor, a bevel gauge, and test cuts, or quickly with a magnetic digital angle finder like the S&F Stead & Fast ($24 ). In this project, the table-saw blade has to set at exactly 60 degrees, but you can’t rely on the saw’s bevel-angle adjustment to provide the needed accuracy.