I made a tofu press and have some Howard butcher block conditioner on hand. Is that enough for a finish or do I need something more?
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Woodworking
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I have a related question!
I bought some wood kitchen stuff from an amateur home gamer with a small stand at a fair. The finish is non-existent and it needs more sanding with finer grit... but my issue now is that I don't know how to deeply saturate it with food-safe oils. I slather the stuff on, but it doesn't seem to absorb. I'm more used to using product like orange oil, which woods seem to take well, but that's not food-safe.
Do I need some sort of vacuum chamber to extract the air in the wood fibers and cause the oil to deeply penetrate? Or is there a particular oil that is good about absorbing into wood? I've been using a beeswax/mineral combo which has been fine for cutting boards, but it's not doing the job for the woods in these utensils.
Only sand up to about 200 grit. Any finer and the wood pores get clogged and will make it harder to absorb finish.
Good to know. They may be that fine already; they feel rough, but that could be because there really is no finish at all; they're just dry wood.
Yeah not sure about for curved surfaces, but planing flat surfaces will make it feel super smooth and ready to take a finish. Note that it can also be wood dependent.
If you want it smoother, scrape it rather than sand it.
They're utensils, and wood; I feel as if they'd last longer and wear better if I could get oil into them.
I have a set of wooden training gear from a martial art I studied years ago, before it broke me. It's good wood, to start with, but for several years every few days I'd oil them down with orange oil, and it'd just... absorb into the wood. Now, even years later, they're like handling a nice, smooth, almost metal-heavy material. I'd like to try to get my kitchen utensils like that, but I can't find a food safe product that the wood takes as well as orange oil. TBF, I haven't tried pure mineral oil...
That's why I asked: is it the oil I'm using, or do I need to immerse in a vacuum chamber, or what? How do I get the wood to absorb the oil? I'm happy to keep re-applying every few days, if only the wood would take the oil and it would just sit in the surface indefinitely.
I finish my cutting boards first with pure mineral oil, I buy the stuff from the pharmacy aisle of the grocery store they sell as a laxative. I sand to 220 grit, wipe with a wet (with water) rag to raise the grain, sand it again at 220 grit, and then flood the surface with oil and massage it in. I often feel it soaking in under my fingers. I let it sit for about an hour, then flood again any dry spots.
Then I'll rub it with "board butter" aka food safe paste wax aka mixture of mineral oil and beeswax. Rub it in, let it dry for a few minutes, buff it off. Let that sit for a few hours and the board is ready to use. As you wash the cutting board, this finish will wear off, and every now and again you have to reapply the wax.
I'll give this a try, thanks. I think the maker skipped these steps.