Thread: Food safe finish???

My guess is it's camellia oil.

"commonly known as tea seed oil, as it is the essential oil from the seeds of the tea plant. While the leaves of the tea plant are commonly dried to produce tea, the seeds can also undergo a cold-pressing or solvent extraction process to extract the concentrated oil".

yep Camellia Oil, used to coat (in tiny amounts) steel that you don't wish to rust. Not sure if food safe. Expensive too.
It's used for tools and tables like jointers, table saws, planes etc. as it will not affect the surfaces of timber that are to be glued.

Small amounts are edible and used by the chinese to treat everything from knobbly knees to dragon bites. That's why its expensive.

I wouldn't use it as a food safe oil though - if you use too much it eventually forms a skin which looks naff.

Get yourself some proper stuff or at least medicinal paraffin oil.

Originally Posted by BobL

Get yourself some proper stuff or at least medicinal paraffin oil.

U-Beaut Foodsafe Oil

Wood whisperer did a short comparison on food safe finishes recently and landed on 100% pure Tung oil as his preferred.

I’ve been using U beaut for a while now:
FOODSAFE PLUS – U-Beaut Polishes

Plus 3 for U-Beaut, I have been using it for years now and as far as I am aware no one has died.

It may well be Camellia oil to protect the table saw and band saw plates...

That is why it would have been next to the paste wax.

I will not use it on my bowls.

I use Grape seed oil for a food safe finish, as advised by a mentor some years ago,,,

I also have some Ubeaut Foodsafe Plus......

Once I knew it might be camellia oil (now confirmed), I found this response on a Japanese Tools web site..


It is a light oil that creates a membrane over the surface of the metal, which blocks moisture. It is also food-safe as it is extracted from 100% from the Camellia plant.

Aaah food safe, the myth continues