Thread: timber suitable for utensils and containers

Thanks for the tips, Jim.
My cousin in Maleny gave me a big chunk from a white beech log last year. If it's dry in my life time I'll make some utensils! One of my woodie mates is going to cut it up for me soon. I can't even lift it!
Cheers,
BB

Originally Posted by powderpost

I use white beech for cooking utensils, burnished and finished with walnut oil. Been doing so for six years now, in fact one of my regular customers has a son allergic peanuts and any hint of peanut oil. No problem there.
Jim

Pine, Cottonwood, Bois d'Arc, Mesquite... all make good utensils. We have some bowls that I made out of Black Walnut that we've used for salads, etc., and so far no illnesses.
The harder the wood, though, the better the utensil, because it's harder to scar up. Neil is right as rain about no finish is best. Wood can get rid of bacteria on it own, even without washing it. Yep, that's right.
When you wash a wooden utensil, if you'll dry it quick as you rinse it, and then let it air dry the rest of the way (towards dry), you can get rid of any raised grain by a quick rub with table salt and a paper towel. The salt will also help to purify the piece so it's ready to use again.
Before glass, and before tin, they used wood. It's still the cat's whiskers in my book.

Wood's anti-microbial properties are a bit of an urban myth Al. I trawled through the research a while ago:

Originally Posted by rsser

the only untreated wood shown ... to combat nasties is good ole crapiata. And the tests were only done with common bacteria - not with viruses or parasites.

Originally Posted by rsser

Wood's anti-microbial properties are a bit of an urban myth Al. I trawled through the research a while ago:

I was also reading about this not long ago, in order to make some sense of it. I got this bit from a German site, somewhere: Résumé / Abstract The survival of two hygienically relevant bacteria, Escherichia coli plE639 and Enterococcus faecium, was followed on wooden sawdust of seven different European woods (pine, spruce, larch, beech, maple, poplar, and oak) versus polyethylene chips by using cultivation-dependent and molecular-based methods in parallel. The survival of the bacteria on wood was dependent on various factors such as the wood species, the type of the inoculated bacterium, the ambient temperature, and humidity. The bacterial titre decreased fastest on pine followed by oak compared to the other woods and plastic. Cultivation-independent analysis employing DNA extraction, Southern blot hybridisation, and PCR-based detection of marker genes of the test bacteria confirmed this result. The decline in bacterial numbers correlated with the decrease of bacterial DNA in the samples. Amounts of DNA of E. coli and E. faecium recovered from pine and oak-wood sawdust were generally lower compared to the other woods and plastic. The presented study shows that pine and oak exhibit substantially better hygienic performance than plastic and indicates an antibacterial effect caused by a combination of the hygroscopic properties of wood and the effect of wood extractives."

I also read something about the same type of research being done on bare wood, at an American University (can't remember which one... Tennessee maybe?) and they were smearing E.Coli and other such on wood, and then testing after different periods of time, and finding most of the bacteria dead.
Of course, the two people that write the blurbs on Snopes said it wasn't a truly scientific test, but they didn't say how they came to that conclusion.
But, since I'm not a scientist, I haven't done any experiments of my own, so you may be right, Ern.

Good stuff Al.

Not gonna ask what E. faecium is!

So there's an anti-bacterial effect with two timbers - be good to know how much and therefore how far normal hygiene procedures could be relaxed.

Results of my scan here: https://www.woodworkforums.com/showth...ight=parasites

Thanks Al, & thanks again to all the other contributors, I now have a long list of timbers and hints on finishing. Finding some of the timbers and using whatever I can get sure will keep me busy with turning projects for ages

yeah, timber's the bees knees for me. but.... eeeek! eeeek! I couldn't cut raw meat on a wooden board an not wash it... I doubt that the wood can get rid of the bacteria from chicken.... it would be putrid in next to no time ugh I wooden cut my vegies on the board after the chicken either, (pun intended.) not without a good wash and maybe a salt scrub as you suggested.

Cheers,
BB

Originally Posted by OGYT

Pine, Cottonwood, Bois d'Arc, Mesquite... all make good utensils. We have some bowls that I made out of Black Walnut that we've used for salads, etc., and so far no illnesses.
The harder the wood, though, the better the utensil, because it's harder to scar up. Neil is right as rain about no finish is best. Wood can get rid of bacteria on it own, even without washing it. Yep, that's right.
When you wash a wooden utensil, if you'll dry it quick as you rinse it, and then let it air dry the rest of the way (towards dry), you can get rid of any raised grain by a quick rub with table salt and a paper towel. The salt will also help to purify the piece so it's ready to use again.
Before glass, and before tin, they used wood. It's still the cat's whiskers in my book.

I think there was something on a short lived show on some comercial channel or other, called "What's good for you". Their highly scientific conclosions were that wood boards were the best. With marble , plastic and other modern materials the bacteria seemed to travel and pretty soon was all over the board, but with the wood, the bacteria stayed more localized, trapped in the pores. Seems you can't get rid of them, but you can limit their spread.