African Mahogany and Ash Basket Weave Cutting Board

General
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It was a fun and relatively easy board to make.
As shown, it is 9 columns wide, an odd number, important as noted below.
The height is 8 rows.
Each cell is a stack of 3 woods.
Wood piece count is 9 x 8 x 3 = 216.

Why an odd number of columns is important.

After the first glue-up, you cut board into sticks, 8 in this case.
Each stick has 9 cells.
Flip each stick end-for-end to get the weave pattern.
If it were an even number of columns, flipping end-for-end will not matter.
To visualize this concept, rotate the photo shown 90 degrees and note how every other (now row) is flipped.

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In a basketweave cutting board, the “number triplets” are a shorthand for how many strips of each wood/color are grouped together at each stage.

Think of each triplet like:

A / B / C

where each number is the strip count or unit width for the three visual bands in the repeating pattern.

1. First glue-up: make striped blanks

The first glue-up creates long striped panels.

Example triplet:

1-3-1

means:

A B B B A

So the center wood is three units wide, bordered by one unit of the other wood.

For a basketweave look, you usually make two complementary blanks:

1-3-1
3-1-3

So one blank is mostly dark in the middle, the other mostly light in the middle.

2. Second glue-up: cut strips, rotate every other strip

After the first panel is glued, you crosscut it into equal-width strips.

Then you rotate or flip every other strip so the long grain/color blocks alternate direction visually.

The logic is:

Strip 1: normal
Strip 2: rotated/flipped
Strip 3: normal
Strip 4: rotated/flipped

This makes the “over-under” illusion begin.

The triplets now describe the visible block sequence across each row. A row that was:

1-3-1

beside a flipped/rotated row becomes visually opposed by:

3-1-3

That contrast is what makes the weave.

3. Third glue-up: cut again and alternate again

After the second glue-up, you cut the board again, usually perpendicular to the previous cuts.

Then you again alternate orientation/order during the final glue-up.

The goal is to create repeating squares/rectangles where the apparent “wide” band switches direction:

horizontal wide band
vertical wide band
horizontal wide band
vertical wide band

That gives the woven checker effect.

Core rule

For a clean basketweave, the triplets should be mirror/complement pairs:

1-3-1 pairs with 3-1-3
1-2-1 pairs with 2-1-2
2-4-2 pairs with 4-2-4

The middle number controls the “fat strand” of the weave.
The outside numbers control the border/separation that makes the weave readable.

A good starting pattern is:

1-3-1 / 3-1-3

or, if you want a subtler weave:

1-2-1 / 2-1-2

The main idea: each glue-up converts long stripes into blocks, and each alternating rotation swaps which wood appears dominant, producing the over-under basket illusion.