Applying a Food Safe Wood Finish | Build a Cutting Board with Hand Tools | Hand Plane Foundations

[@brittanyw1827]

This was such a thorough and helpful video and straight to the point, thank you ❤

[@robohippy]

I have been making wood bowls for almost 30 years. I have been using walnut oils on them almost since the start. There are 2 specifically made for bowls that I know of, Mike Mahoney's and The Doctor's Woodshop. They are heat treated to break down the proteins that can cause nut allergies. Both also have carnuba wax in them. I do like to treat my cutting boards with a heat gun for the last application. On, end grain only. The old butcher shops would use mineral oil after clean up for the work day. It would provide an 'impermeable' layer to protect the wood over night. It would be scraped off in the morning prior to beginning work. Bees wax is very soft and will leave finger prints. The carnuba is much harder. Many 'food safe' finishes are available, but if I can't eat it straight out of the can, I won't use it on anything intended for daily use. Some people are very sensitive to the chemical driers. Walnut oil, which is not what you can get in the oil section at the grocery store, cures slowly, like a week or more. Sunlight and very low heat will help it cure. The rags can combust, but the only time I was able to get mine to combust, I left one on a black plastic bag on the south side of my shop, and the combined sunlight and black plastic was enough to start it smoldering.

[@VanFlicke]

Thank you for the info and best practices, especially the differences between hardware store versions of similar oils. There used to be a cooking show on PBS in the 1990s that showed how to clean and treat cutting boards - I wish I remembered the name of it - but one of the two hosts was a furniture maker and the other was a chef, so they brought both perspectives to the 'how to use and keep a good cutting board'. Love your channel (the link in the description times out with a server - 500 - error, FYI)

[@BRFineWoodworking]

Thank you!

[@marcofabri923]

Excellent.... Well presented and informative

[@gregritchie1758]

Well done. Informative. Can you comment on 19th century stain and finish cherry without masking grain, figure of wood? Store bought stains seem to hide figure of wood. Can a stain be mixed with the method you've just demonstrated? Thank you in advance

[@BRFineWoodworking]

There were lots of things used to color wood in the 19th century. Stains could be made from walnut hulls, various plants, flowers and barks. I wouldn’t use them on a cutting board though. Some were toxic if ingested. I prefer to avoid pigment stains that you find in the local hardware stores if I can, at least for direct application to the bare wood. The pigments in them are very coarse and are primarily suspended in the solvent, not dissolved. So the pigments lodge in the pores and grain of the wood, and that’s why they tend to muddy the grain. That’s why these stains work best with large pored open grained woods with very strong and distinct grain, like oak, ash and chestnut. Pigment stains from the hardware store work great on those woods. For tighter grained furniture grade hardwoods like walnut, cherry, mahogany, maple, etc., I prefer not to color them at all and just let Mother Nature do her thing. Over the natural course of time these woods become richer and more beautiful all on their own, so I find patience works better than any artificial color I can give them. If I want a specific color for a project, my first preference is to pick a wood that will give me that color naturally. I find this works best most of the time. If I have to color one of these woods, I prefer dyes like W. D. Lockwood and TransTint over stains. The pigments in dyes are ground much finer than those in hardware store stains and are designed to fully dissolve in the solvent. Some work in water, some in alcohol, and some in oil. Dyes are much clearer and let the grain show through much more than stains. They’re my preferred way to color wood if I have to add color. As with any finish, test the dye on scrap before applying to an actual project. Once a dye is applied to bare wood, it has to be planed off if you don’t like it as dyes penetrate much deeper than stains and absorb into the wood fibers as opposed to sitting on top of them. So experiment on test boards until you get something you like.

[@johnhanny4716]

Would you care to share the name of the product of the oil you applied to the cutting on the video please.

[@grf81993]

Tried and True is the product