food serving platter safety

[bassmansimon]

I'm interested in making some food serving platters (cheese & nibblies etc) from common flooring boards. I think it should be safe to serve food on if i properly use a laquer finish once fully cured. I'm thinking of common Australian flooring timbers such as blackbutt, spotted gum and ironbark. Would any of these timbers prove to be a problem in terms of food safety?

[Robson Valley]

What does CSIRO, Forest Products Division, have to say?

[dai sensei]

Those timbers will be fine. Watch you finish though, I would be using a food safe oil like our UBeaut's Foodsafe Plus (http://www.ubeaut.com.au/FS+.htm)

[Prle77]

and in case you need to glue up pieces.. use titebond III or titebond II rather than polyurethane glue... And definitely food safe oil rather than lacquer

[bassmansimon]

Thanks. I have some ubeaut foodsafe oil so will sand it up to super smooth and apply that. I was considering lacquer as a finish as i wasn't sure of the qualities of the timbers. But if dai sensai says they're ok that's definitely good enough for me. Will have to get some ubeaut sanding sealer too as it acts as a disinfectant also before oiling. Thanks all.

[BobL]

There are two issues to think about in terms of safety
1) Toxicity of the wood.
Most timbers are fine and even if toxic the amount that can be ingested from a serving platter, or even a bread board is so small it won't be a problem
2) Bug growth.
Wood is naturally anti-bacterial, more so than plastic so this is not usually a problem either. If you happen to cut things like meat on the wood and don't wash it then that's a problem caused by meat not wood.

The third issue is washing. If its a platter a wipe down with a a surface cleaner is all that is usually needed. If you put things like antipasti, gooey cheeses, olives or other oily things it may need to be dunked in soapy water. This is where things like food safe oils are better to use than lacquered or epoxy finishes which will eventually craze and come off. When oils are used as finishes, after every few washes they can be easily reapplied.

[bassmansimon]

Hi BobL. Thanks for taking the time to write all that down. A very helpful post for future reference :)