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Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons
- bythreads 10mo agoCheck out volvox and auro products Works well for me
- Dumblydorr 10mo agoIncredible analysis, great blog post! What’s wrong with using raw wood? Will that go bad quickly?
- awestroke 10mo agoWhen the wood fibers get wet they swell and become soft. When soft, the surface will be very sensitive to damage. Fibers on the surface will raise and then not return to their original position, causing surface roughness. Repeated cycles of wet/dry will cause cracks.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- Saline9515 10mo agoFrom experience, even the cheapest wood spoons won't bulge, as long as you don't leave them immerged in water for a long time.
- mmooss 10mo agoCould that be because they are treated somehow?
- Saline9515 10mo agoThey were likely treated with mineral oil, but the finish has been gone for a long time now.
- esperent 10mo agoDepending on the climate, it can go moldy very quickly.
- coryrc 10mo agoIf you use the appropriate wood, you can wet and sand many times to get a smooth finish. You can burnish it (rub with hard metal) to close the surface well. But it will still stain and absorb smells, just to a lessor extent. You'll notice if you use the same spoon for coffee and tea, or the same spoon for curry and miso soup.
- convolvatron 10mo agoI don't have a problem. if they get a little funky I just sand them down. and let them soak in food-grade mineral oil for a while. same with cutting boards and butcher block tables.
- zkmon 10mo agoI always wondered whether the wooden spatulas and spoons they sell at IKEA are safe to use. I never know what that wood was treated with or coated with.
- vages 10mo agoPerhaps I’m naive, but buying from an IKEA (in Norway) or another big store feels less risky than buying something handmade. Several people are involved in making every product at IKEA. At least one of them must be an expert in compliance. They can expect scrutiny and product recalls, fines and bad sales if they’re found out. The one person making the hand-made spoon does not necessarily know all the environmental regulations that should be followed.
- xyzzy_plugh 10mo agoI had a ceramic coffee mug that I loved and used very regularly. I bought it at a fair from a local potter and it had a very unique glaze, lots of blues and greens. A friend who is a potter saw me drinking out of it and said that the glaze looked suspicious. He said it looked loaded with heavy metals, and that I should probably not use it or at least get it tested. At the time I knew a guy who worked in a lab that tested certain substances for hazardous materials. He was intrigued and brought it in to work one day, and later texted me asking if I wanted it back, because it was very likely leaching cobalt, lead, and cadmium, and it was probably also very mildly radioactive. I feel much better drinking out of mugs from IKEA and other big name stores.
- bluGill 10mo agomaybe. Or maybe they are just buying from China and trusting it to be good and not change formula once you accept the sample.
- mbrock 10mo agoI think all wood finishes are "food safe" once they're cured.
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- coryrc 10mo agoDude already found the perfect thing, but wanted an excuse to play with random metallic driers and resins instead. Fine, but don't pretend it was necessary. But it’s really hard to mix properly and apply on small wooden objects like spoons and cups. I almost always use too much accelerator, Just use a precision scale. Pharmacists give me side-eye when I mention cutting my medicine. No, I do small-scale epoxy mixing!
- kurthr 10mo agoYou're apparently referring to Rubio Monocoat.
- Rebelgecko 10mo agoI have only used Rubio once and didn't bother with accelerant at all. For my use case it worked out fine. Although it's the only time I've done any sort of wood finishing so take it with a grain of salt.
- alin23 10mo agoAuthor here, it's not that it's not possible, it's just annoying to do. Indeed, two-component hardwax oils are close to perfect (although the resulting polymer is not ideal), but having to do the precise pouring and mixing, and trying to smear that thick blend onto the wood, hundreds and hundreds of times, is not something I want to do. I want to enjoy the process of making the wooden utensil as much as I want to see the end result, hence my excuse to play with random metallic driers and resins.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- mmooss 10mo ago> Some carvers use urushi lacquer which is the sap from a tree common to Japan. Urushi is the name of the Japanese tree, Toxicodendron verniciflua (the genus formerly was named Rhus), and of the lacquer of which its sap is the main constituent. The lacquer is also called urushiol (note, not urushoil), which is also the resinous substance found in other members of the Toxicodendron genus: T. radicans and T. rydbergii, or poison ivy; T. diversilobum and T. pubescens, poison oak; and T. vernix, poison sumac. The resinous oil is what causes allergic reactions. Which finally gets to my point: What are the allergic affects of the tree, its raw sap, the liquid lacquer, and maybe for hypersenstive/reactive urushiol allergies, the finished lacquer? I don't meant to be alarmist - people have been eating off urushi lacquer for centuries. I'm thinking more about working with it. EDIT: For those interested in the scientific aspects of the resin, plants, and allergic reaction: Aaron C. Gladman MD. Toxicodendron Dermatitis: Poison Ivy, Oak, and Sumac. Wilderness & Environmental Medicine vol 17 #2 (June 2006) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1580/pr31-05.1 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1580/pr31-05.1
- esquivalience 10mo ago> Which finally gets to my point: What are the allergic affects of the tree, its raw sap, the liquid lacquer, and maybe for hypersenstive/reactive urushiol allergies, the finished lacquer? The Wood Database can be a useful practical site for this sort of thing. I found [0], a page for a different wood which is said to contain the same allergen: > The sap contains urushiol (the same allergen found in Poison Ivy), and can still be irritating to some sensitized individuals even after the wood has been dried, and sap can also seep through some wood finishes to the surface of the wood. Same as poison ivy? Count me out if true: I react badly. [0] https://www.wood-database.com/rengas/ https://www.wood-database.com/rengas/
- dotancohen 10mo agoThe Wood Database? Thank you for once again reminding me how incredible the Information Highway once was, and could be. I lament our detour onto the Commercial Highway.
- esquivalience 10mo agoAlin (OP), what a wonderful article. I've had the same problem and had given up experimenting for similar reasons to you. I'm now thinking to finish the cup I've half carved and have sitting on the shelf in the shed. Thanks! Your shop looks great too. Others might enjoy folowing the link buried towards the bottom of the article.
- alin23 10mo agoThank you for the kind words! Do try to finish your cup, it's a great experience both to drink from something made by your hands, and to drink from a wooden cup if it's finished well. Make sure you do water popping after finishing the carving and sanding process. It's what makes the difference between wood that catches your lips and wood that feels like ceramic. The process is simple: sand with 600 or 400 grit, whichever you have, then get all the wood wet with water (faucet is fine), let dry completely (hairdryer helps), sand again with 600/400 grit and repeat about 3 times until wetting the wood no longer makes it feel rough.
- esquivalience 10mo agoGreat advice thanks, and a new technique to learn too. When making walking sticks I usually go to 1200 grit, or 2500 where finish is really important. Finishing is my favourite part of the job, similar to your point about epoxy (why would you want to interface with a layer of plastic?)
- chias 10mo agoThank you for selling your version online!
- moron4hire 10mo agoI make wooden cups. I use water-based polyurethane out of a spray can to waterproof the interiors. I find it a lot easier to use than epoxy in almost every aspect. For the exterior and for cutting boards, I use a hard wax oil I make from linseed oil and beeswax. It's easy to prepare and I usually provide a small cup of it to whomever I'm gifting the cutting board. I reuse small, glass jelly jars with screw-on metal lids, about 1/2 a cup in size. You do need to leave a layer of water on top, though, because otherwise the top layer will polymerize and leave a rubbery layer you have to remove the next time you use it.
- dspillett 10mo agoInteresting, I'll have to give that a detailed read later. It might be applicable to 3D prints. To head off the people who will jump up-and-down calling me paranoid for not considering untreated printed works food safe, and accusing me of accusing them of poisoning family & friends (in some circles the discussion can get more cantankerous than the vi/emacs thing!): you keep using printed things for food without treatment if you like, and I won't judge, but I prefer to remain paranoid because if printed items were food safe it would be a selling point and I don't see any manufacturers using food based examples in their advertising.
- Aurornis 10mo ago> To head off the people who will jump up-and-down calling me paranoid for not considering untreated printed works food safe, I’ve been involved with consumer 3D printing for over a decade and I don’t recall ever seeing a conversation where anyone suggested 3D printer parts were default food safe. It’s one of the more common FAQs you see on 3D printing forums.
- dspillett 10mo agoI'm obviously in the wrong groups on facebook. Oh, there is some passion the other way. I'm happy that the down-vote-y anger here is on the correct side! (unless you are the only one who agrees and the other downs are from the “how dare you suggest I might do something wrong” mob)
- fanatic2pope 10mo agoI'm personally on team Robinson. For wooden objects actually used with food, the best finish is no finish. https://www.finewoodworking.com/2024/10/10/the-best-food-safe-finish-may-be-none-at-all https://www.finewoodworking.com/2024/10/10/the-best-food-saf...
- justincormack 10mo agoSure, but the article is mainly about looks (and in the case of wood cups, which seem fairly impractical, although sake cups are ok unfinished, taste transfer). They can look nicer with a finish. I generally dont care, I keep my salad spoons with some oil, and my cooking spoons plain.
- levocardia 10mo ago>You can use soap if you want, but studies have shown it doesn’t make a difference. (...no links provided). Really? "Studies show" you don't need to use soap to rinse off the wooden cutting board you just chopped up raw chicken on? Without a citation there I'm extremely skeptical
- eek2121 10mo agoSame. I have a wood cutting board and I always use hot water and dish soap to clean it after.
- wizzwizz4 10mo agoYou're right to be: it's a common myth. Here's a write-up debunking it, with 6 citations: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/130364/57154 https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/130364/57154 > The current scientific consensus as far as I can see is that wooden is less safe than plastic or glass as it results in more biofilm formation, and more absorption than plastic or glass.
- D-Machine 10mo agoActually, the myth is still that plastic is safer. That "debunking" you linked is extremely biased and poor, uses very dated and selective sources, and at least one of the papers it cites is irrelevant nonsense (testing for contamination from raw chicken without even washing the boards: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1472-765X.2011.03039.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1472-765X.2011.03039.x) and the conclusion is broadly contradicted by numerous modern reviews (see [1-3] below) and other papers, including ones that look at actual epidemiological data and find no difference or more safety from wooden boards [2]. Biofilm also generally takes days or 24 hours minimum to form, and requires constant moisture, so claims that any kind of cutting board develop "more biofilm" are immediately suspect as well, and clearly do not reflect any kind of sane real-world usage. It is trivial to search Google Scholar for this topic and see that, in most cases, there are no meaningful practical differences for bacterial safety between wood vs. plastic boards, and, if anything, the anti-microbial properties and self-healing nature of wood boards probably in general do make them safer than plastic boards, which quickly get permanent gouges that harbor more bacteria. Wood cutting boards can also be rapidly sterilized in a microwave, which is more convenient for cooking dishes with multiple ingredients than e.g. the dishwasher for plastic boards, or dilute bleach, for either. And in fact the whole argument is moot precisely because the real clear factor is obviously proper washing and sterilizing. Given the astounding lack of evidence for plastic superiority, and the clear evidence that cutting boards produce non-trivial micro-plastics [4], it is still quite reasonable to prefer wood overall, at least in the home. References: [1] Aviat, F., Gerhards, C., Rodriguez-Jerez, J.-j., Michel, V., Bayon, I.L., Ismail, R. and Federighi, M. (2016), Microbial Safety of Wood in Contact with Food: A Review. COMPREHENSIVE REVIEWS IN FOOD SCIENCE AND FOOD SAFETY, 15: 491-505. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4337.12199 https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4337.12199 [2] Dean O Cliver, Cutting Boards in Salmonella Cross-Contamination, Journal of AOAC INTERNATIONAL, Volume 89, Issue 2, 1 March 2006, Pages 538–542, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaoac/89.2.538 https://doi.org/10.1093/jaoac/89.2.538 [3] Boursillon D, Riethmüller V (2007), "The safety of wooden cutting boards: Remobilization of bacteria from pine, beech, and polyethylene". British Food Journal, Vol. 109 No. 4 pp. 315–322, doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/00070700710736561 https://doi.org/10.1108/00070700710736561 [4] Özuluğ, O., Şarlak, İ., Sarcan, F., … Yürekli, Ö. D. (2025). Health Risks and Environmental Threats of the Food Prepared on Plastic Cutting Boards. Turkish Journal of Bioscience and Collections, 9(2), 65-75. https://doi.org/10.26650/tjbc.1745221 https://doi.org/10.26650/tjbc.1745221
- Aurornis 10mo agoThis is an interesting article, though I wish they had relaxed some of the requirements. Demanding something that both cures fast and is free of solvents seems unnecessarily specific. For hobby projects finishing on a tight deadline is usually not a high priority so longer cure times are an acceptable tradeoff. For larger scale or business oriented projects the use of a solvent can be fine because proper VOC protective gear is not that expensive. Even for hobby work it’s not hard to get reasonable VOC protective gear or establish a fume extraction hood out of some cardboard and a cheap box fan next to a window in the shop space.
- derefr 10mo agoThe author of the article has a woodworking business (linked on the bottom of their homepage: https://gospodaria.com/ https://gospodaria.com/). So they do need fast turnaround times for profitability. However, as they mention, they do this work from home, and they don't really have a good setup for VOC protection. From the article: > In the winter months I carve indoors and have to finish the pieces indoors as well, and the horrible solvent smell fills my house for a whole day. A jury-rigged fume hood will work if you're doing one item at a time, but it doesn't work if you're doing work in batches. (I get the impression that the best next step for the author, would be to consider building themselves a humidity-controlled drying shed, which would live at least a few feet from their building's air envelope. Doesn't need to be anything fancy; build an ordinary shed, and then get the small-space HVAC equipment from e.g. a marijuana grow-tent supplier.)
- kleiba 10mo agoMy biggest grief with wooden utensils replaceing plastic ones and cardboard(-ish) cup lids replacing plastic lids is the texture - I almost shudder everytime these environmentally friendly replacements touch my mouth, to the point that I eat in the most ridiculous way in order to avoid having to touch the wooden fork when I'm trying to get the food off of it. And the reason is exactly the finish. Metal and plastic spoons, forks, lids, etc. are nice and smooth and don't get in your way. Cheaply made wood or cardboards ones are rough and tacky. Of course you could argue that from an environmental standpoint, that's not a bug but a feature: now I'm using even less disposable stuff (first, no plastic because it's been replaced by other stuff; and second also the replacements because I hate using them).
- spankalee 10mo agoThis article is talking about high-end hand-carved kitchen utensils. Spoons you cook with, not spoons you eat with.
- tom_ 10mo agoThe article also has a whole section on a wooden coffee cup!
- ezekg 10mo agoI get plastic, but what's wrong with metal utensils?
- kleiba 10mo agoNothing, you might have misread my comment.
- hfbdbrbr 10mo ago[flagged]
- kleiba 10mo agoSir, yes sir, will do. Later.
- spott 10mo agoI don’t have the time pressure, so I just use tung oil. I throw it in a bag and vacuum seal the spoon (with tung oil) for a day or two, then remove, wipe, and let cure for a month. The resulting finish is largely dishwasher safe for a year or so before I have to reapply. Without the vacuum sealing stage, it doesn’t last as long.
- Spooky23 10mo agoThe solution is, use a metal spoon. Wood is great for serving spoons, I have some fancy French ones, you just never dishwash and every few months wipe down with grapeseed or canola oil. For eating? Wood just is not a good material.
- teekert 10mo agoI use wood only for my non-stick pans. Metal for the metal pans. I sometime put some olive oil on the utensils, but generally, I just use them, put them in the dishwasher, repeat, until they break. They are ~50 cents at Ikea. And so I don't eat any plastics anymore. Of course, the article is about high end stuff, but I just want to put everything in the dishwasher. Which I presume you can't do with even the best coated high end utensils? We also switched to wooden Cutting boards, I find them to be pretty annoying as they really go bad fast in the dishwasher and can be quite expensive. We just wash them with boiling water, a bit of soap every now and then.
- carlosjobim 10mo agoNever put a wooden cutting board in the dish washer. Never use boiling water. Use warm water and a little bit of soap.
- tecoholic 10mo agoSeems a little extreme to pour boiling water on wooden cutting boards to clean? Do you live in really cold and snowy place without much access to sunlight hours? Just washing them with soap and drying them in sunlight is all we do and it’s been good. We also don’t cut meat on the wooden board. I would use hot water if it were meat on the board.
- jmkd 10mo agoDoesn't make sense to use Osmo Polyx oil as the baseline when Osmo Top oil is the slightly friendlier and equally beautiful food-safe version.
- alin23 10mo agoOsmo Polyx is what I already had around from other wooden furniture projects, that's all. I try to not store too many cans of unused finishes around my house so I try to use what I already have first. Top Oil indeed seems very similar to what I did (hardwax, drying oils, driers) but half of it is still white spirit solvent, which I'm guessing will give it the same smell as Polyx. The closest thing I found to what I want is Walrus Oil Furniture Butter (https://walrusoil.com/products/furniture-butter https://walrusoil.com/products/furniture-butter) but I didn't know about it at the time.
- jmkd 10mo agoWalrus product looks good. Here's another one worth knowing but may be difficult to acquire outside UK: https://workshopheaven.com/alfie-shine-hard-wax-polish-fragrance-free-60ml/ https://workshopheaven.com/alfie-shine-hard-wax-polish-fragr...
- jasonthorsness 10mo agoThis is great! I’m going to try the melting carnauba wax in tung oil one. I tried pure tung but it’s too matte for what I want.
- userbinator 10mo agoSome recommend non-edible petrol-based mineral oil (aka liquid parrafin) because it doesn’t go rancid, but has the same effect of not actually doing much for protection and will leak into hot liquids. Highly-refined mineral oil is food-safe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil#Food_preparation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil#Food_preparation Why even use wood if you’re going to cover it in a layer of clear plastic? I find it amusing that those who will use wood or "natural" (petroleum is also naturally occurring...) products for some sort of weird misguided eco-virtue-signaling, inevitably end up needing to basically reinvent the chemistry of finding an inert, durable material that brought us modern plastics. All these drying oils create a layer of polymerised material, which can be classed as plastic anyway. Waxes, regardless of source, attribute their properties to long hydrocarbon chains, just like polyethylene.
- dekhn 10mo agoAh yes: "Congratulations! You have just completed the cycle of recapitulating the collection of processes which have brought us the present!"
- vpribish 10mo agowell, it's an arts and crafts project and they may value avoiding petrochemical products in the end-product. regardless it's interesting to work through that whole process instead of just accepting it.
- DannyBee 10mo ago100% - this sort of insanity is just silly.
- abdullahkhalids 10mo agoThere is a large difference between extracting fossil fuels from the ground and using substances extracted from plants. Only one of them is renewable, and hence the only sustainable way for the human species to live.
- deleted 10mo ago
- DannyBee 10mo agoWoodworker and person who has spent a tremendous amount of time on wood finishing chemistry here. This is very confused. First, all wood finishes you can buy are food-safe once cured. They aren't allowed to be sold otherwise, at least in the US/Europe/et al. If you are using them once heated, this is not always as true (and regulations vary a bit), but if we are talking about food prep/salad/you name it, they are all safe. Heat wise, if we are talking about using it in boiling water to stir something, most finishes would be fine from a safety standpoint (not all can withstand this though). As a general rule of thumb, if you aren't heating the wood above 200F, you aren't really going to get a finishes to release toxic fumes[1] Second, as for solvents - smell is not everything. The HDI he mentions rubio having will not smell like anything until the concentration is way way way way too high. If you can smell it, you are in trouble. HDI is also much more dangerous than most solvents[2]. The oil is also a solvent. Solvents are just things that you can dissolve something else in. If they want to avoid certain types of solvents for some reason, that should be about safety or something, and if they want to evaluate that, smell is probably the wrong evaluation criteria. To give one example of solvent elimination with a purpose, let's take VOC's, which are about pollution[3]. Avoiding VOC solvents makes for cleaner air, but again, VOC compliant/exempt/etc solvents vary wildly in whether they are safer for people or not than non-VOC exempt solvents. If you are trying instead to avoid human-toxic solvents, you would choose a different set, etc. [1] There are so many finishes with so many different properties that i can't 100% guarantee this, but non-professional stuff you can buy at a woodworking store or a big box store is going to be fine [2] The lack of smell of isocyanate's is main the reason you can get service life indicating respirator catridges from 3m/et al - otherwise you would not be able to determine if your cartridge is working or not, since you would not smell it when spray finishing/etc until the concentration is way too high, even if your cartridge is spent. Sane folks just use supplied air anyway, rather than risk it at all. [3] not safety to humans, though often highly confused with being safer.
- energy123 10mo agoWhat if you're using it as a serving spoon from a boiling dish? How much heat can it withstand (or for how long) before it's unsafe
- robhlam 10mo agoI treat the spoons and ladles I carve with food grade organic flax/linseed oil and roast in a fan oven at 180 deg C, giving a robust coating that is also very safe. A few coats are required to fill all the pores in the wood for a beautiful satin finish but all the coats can be completed in a couple of hours total. Colours start at a something slightly darker than the natural oil colour and darken to the colour of chocolate depending on how long they’re in the oven for. The smell is of hot cooking oil unless you go for full chocolate brown in which case it starts to smell of burnt oil and a bit smoky. Fully dry your item first and heat it up slowly in the oven to 180 deg C before applying the first coat so that all areas cure and colour equally. Saturate the wood initially then wipe off all excess with a paper towel which you can then use to add the subsequent coats. Check on the spoon and remove any drips that appear during roasting before they harden. Silicone oven mitts are great for handling the spoons while hot.
- FaradayRotation 10mo agoAs a hobbyist woodworker, I've been wondering how to protect my projects. I need to try this, great idea, thanks for sharing.
- wwtempact 10mo agoJust make sure it's a linseed oil without dryer's; they're usually heavy metal compounds.
- FaradayRotation 10mo agoAbsolutely, very good of you to add. The idea of using a drying/boiled linseed oil did not occur to me till now, and the idea is equal parts funny and scary to entertain. Would a wood utensil soaked with wet drying oil even survive the toasting process without turning the oven - and my shop - into an impromptu fireplace? If it did make it, would the heavy metals and charred surface oils add off-flavors to my stew?
- helterskelter 10mo agoJust a heads up, rags used with raw linseed oil will ignite if you aren't careful with them. People say that only the rags used with boiled linseed oil will start fires, but I've seen rags used with raw oil ignite on two occasions. Also...most linseed coatings will mold if they're not kept dry. If you'd like to avoid that, look for purified linseed oil -- it's regular linseed oil, but the proteins that mold feeds on have been removed. If you really want to go crazy, look for the stuff made from food grade oil.
- dwd 10mo agoI've been using pure walnut oil on wooden chopping boards. Anyone else had experience good/bad using walnut?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- derbOac 10mo agoThe timing of this is sort of uncanny as it's been on my mind a lot lately. Generally I use a beeswax and mineral oil finish, sometimes this other product I can't remember the name of made from flax oil. I've been wondering why jojoba oil doesn't get mentioned more in these discussions, either in combination with something else or on its own? It's a wax but liquid at room temperature, and seems to be stable for a long long time, long enough at least that it would probably need some refinishing before it might go bad.
- alin23 10mo agoThe problem with jojoba oil is that it doesn't polymerize or cure. It stays wet in the fibers. Nothing bad with that on wood that doesn't contact hot food and beverages. But if you put wood treated with non-polymerized oil in a hot soup or if you pour hot tea into a cup finished with jojoba oil, the oil will get out of the fibers and into your hot liquid, the fiber will raise and the wood will start to feel rough after a few uses and start to get stained from your food and beverage.
- derbOac 10mo agoBut wouldn't that also be true of mineral oil? I understand why you'd use a polymerizing oil for certain things; I guess I wonder about it as a substitute for mineral oil.
- FpUser 10mo agoRussian wooden spoons, Khokhloma style in articular are pretty much food safe. One can find a finish recipe for those online.
- kazinator 10mo agoI finished a bunch of cutlery handles with tung oil a bunch of years ago. I easily found a bottle of it at Lee Valley Tools. It was the polymerized type, which dried pretty quickly, comparable to oil paint or varnish. The finish was prety glossy. I just used a paper towel to apply several thin coats.
- _ZeD_ 10mo agoWhat's wrong with metal spoons?
- alin23 10mo agoNothing, I'm just not a metal worker.
- chickensong 10mo agoTeam tung oil here. Wooden-handled knives and wooden utensils get a light coat and left outside on a nice day. Repeat for 3-5 days and you're good for at least a year or two, depending on how you treat the items. The coating needs to be light else you get a shellac/lacquer finish. I use Walrus brand, pure tung oil.
- bgnn 10mo agoGreat blog post. I like the emd look of the experimental finish. Couple of years back I went to all wooden spoons in the kitchen. My all time favourite is the most traditional of all: boxwood. This is what wooden utensils are made in my home country for centuries. It's light but dense, hard, and durable. It doesn't absorb color or smells easily as other hardwood. Beautiful too!
- sfink 10mo ago> It's light but dense, What does that mean? It's tough enough that you can make it thinner? It dries out more fully? Or does "dense" refer to something other than density, like tightness of the grain?
- bgnn 10mo agoIt's indeed the tightness of the grain, but also volumetric density (975 kg/m³) is higher than oak or spruce. What I mean with light is, indeed you can make very thin utensils and they won't break, bemd etc so at the end the product is lighter than the obe made with a softer/less dense wood. Boxwood was for centuries the choice of wind instrument makers because of its stability and hardness, which made it possible to create thinner more practical instruments (clarinets, flute etc). till humans discovered granadillo wood, which is as dense as boxwood but much more humidity and temperature stable.
- dyauspitr 10mo agoKids toys, wooden kitchen utensils etc. are to be sanded and used coating free. If you really need to close off the pores, burnish the surface. Burnishing for spatulas for example can be done on a drill press. Just use a smooth rounded end steel bar and a low speed on the drill. You’ll have the concave part done in minutes. For the handle and convex part it’s usually easiest to burnish with a smooth steel rod and move the piece along the side. I can get my hard maple spatula burnished in under 15 minutes. If you really want to keep the fibers from rising a lot post burnishing- water pop the wood, sand with 220, slightly dampen the wood again and then burnish. I haven’t tried this but apparently you can automate the burnishing by using antlers/smooth stones in a rock tumbler.
- fromaj 10mo agoTaking the advice of a pro at my local makerspace, I finished a cutting board with filtered ghee. Has been great so far without turning rancid as i thought it might
- amluto 10mo ago> There’s also Rubio Monocoat and other two-component hardwax oils where the base component is usually a solvent-free blend of drying oils and waxes, and the accelerator component is Hexamethylene diisocyanate or HDI. The base component can cure on its own in about 3 weeks and the accelerator shortens the curing time to less than a day. I find it bizarre that these finishes market the HDI component as an “accelerator”. It seems quite clearly to be a crosslinking agent — it’s a longish molecule with a rather reactive isocyanate group at either end. If you mix it with things it can react with, which likely includes both some waxes (those with hydroxyl groups) and some of the modified oils in “hardwax” oil, it will turn them into something akin to polyurethane. Rubio Monocoat will cure into a different substance with the “accelerator” added than without it. In either case, it cures quite slowly and IMO has a nasty, penetrating chemical smell for weeks. I like how it looks, but the finish is not as stain resistant as many other options are, with or without the HDI. P.S. the SDSes and some common sense suggest that this stuff is actually HDI oligomers, not plain HDI. The oligomers are rather less nasty. P.P.S. Isocyanates are, AIUI, not persistently nasty, as they are too reactive. They react with water to form amines, and unreacted isocyanates will react with the amines to form polyurea, which is reasonably inert. P.P.P.S. The “molecular bonding” stuff that Rubio talks about seems to be nonsense. The part A + part B mix will cure into a fairly hard and tough plasticky substance even if it’s a millimeter or two thick. Don’t do that — it’s not so easy to get the resulting mess off of whatever surface it cured on!
- alin23 10mo agoAuthor here! Since the article publishing, I have found a widely available finish that's very similar to what I'm doing called Walrus Oil Furniture Butter: https://walrusoil.com/products/furniture-butter https://walrusoil.com/products/furniture-butter It's still a combination of polymerizing oils, hard waxes and resin, it's just different plants (linseed instead of tung, pine resin instead of damar etc.) Again, no solvents, people say it smells good. I still have way too much tung oil, wax and resin around because I could only buy high quantities, so I guess I'll keep using my own finish for a long while. But I'd love to hear from others how the Furniture Butter fares for wooden spoons and cups.
- ErroneousBosh 10mo agoWooden spoons are inherently food-safe. Do not put any coating on them.
- adrian_b 10mo agoIt should be noted that this article belongs to a series starting with "Woodworking as an escape from the absurdity of software" :-)
- Gravityloss 10mo agoCan't a spatula be just untreated wood? Or some very light oiling just to reduce the absorption of food. And then solve the problem by disposing of them fairly often. They make a lot of heat in the fireplace since they've absorbed so much fat...