Cutting Board

A cutting board normally serves two purposes: it protects the supporting surface from the knife, and it protects the knife edge from being dulled by a hard work surface, like ceramic tile.

Long practice in using cutting boards led me to employ one in cutting asphalt shingles with my pocket knife on the tailgate of my aging pickup truck. At the beginning I suppose it served to prevent me from cutting lines in the paint, though it certainly did not protect the knife edge from the grit on the shingles.

Eventually I figured out that if you cut into the shingle just deep enough that you can start to feel the knife hitting the grit, you have cut far enough, and can easily break the shingle and have a clean edge, and your knife edge will not be destroyed quite as fast.

I probably should have used a utility knife for this project, but there wasn't one in the utility knife drawer, and I was afraid if I stalled any more on this project it wouldn't get done, so I used what I had.

To me, the black rectangle sitting on top looks like a hard piece of plastic. It's not, it's an old shingle that I am using for a pattern / straight-edge to cut new pieces. Funny how photos can do that.

A note about spelling: Since when is practise word? I also thought it was spelled practice. I thought I had spell checked this before I posted it, but I was looking at it later and I noticed that practice was apparently misspelled. So I checked it again, and spell checker didn't blink. Check the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and they say either spelling is correct. I suspect North Korean agents have infiltrated our spell checking centers are foisting these incorrect spellings in an attempt to bring down Western Civilization. Hold tight to your spelling rules! Do not let these neanderthals lead you down the path of spell-it-however-you-like or we shall all be lost!

Update February 2017 replaced missing picture.