Fancy natural edge cheese boards

Once everyone has agreed that the size and general shape are pretty good it's time for production mode.

So we dig up some English walnut
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And a few chunks of curly maple
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Rough cut to length and plane to a smidge over 1/2".

I've offset the handles just over the centerline so the handle from one board is next to the handle for its partner. This goes with the natural edge theory but also means I don't waste as much extra wood there.
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The maple pieces are about 11" across and 14" long (not counting the handle) the walnut is about 9"x12"
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Much tedious pattern routing to clean up the handle shape, a pass with a round over bit on the edges to get a semi consistent rounding; then several trips through the drum sander and a couple passes with the ROS plus a whole lot of hand sanding on the edge and we're almost done..

Add a heavy coat of board butter, let set overnight then polish off and here we are.

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Beauties, Ryan.:thumb::thumb: Board butter being mineral oil/paraffin mix?

Thanks.

For the board butter I used beeswax and carnuba:
  • 3 parts beeswax
  • 1 part carnuba
  • 16 parts mineral oil
heat in a mason jar in a pot or water until dissolved.

Most of the mixes seem to be 1 part (some sort of) wax and to 4 parts mineral oil.

I have no idea if the carnuba will help the longevity at all, but it was reasonably cheap experiment to try. It seems to have glossed up a little better than some of the plain beeswax mixes I've seen in the past. Brent said he just used beeswax and mineral oil and talked me out of using paraffin as the beeswax seems perhaps a bit harder? I thought about using a semi-drying oil instead of mineral oil, but punted and just went with more or less what the majority of folks are doing (I suspect that the wax would slow the drying down to irrelevant anyway.. but it would be interesting to do some experiments).
 
Ryan where do you get the carnuba and beeswax. Are the food grade? Use just plain mineral oil on my boards.
David

Amazon for the carnuba and the local health food store for the beeswax.

Nominally yes they are food grade, if you can believe the sellers..

carnuba: www.amazon.com/MILLIARD-Carnauba-Wax-Powder-1lb/dp/B00HEPL1WK

The wax mix seemed to make it a bit easier to keep the gloss up, not sure how much difference it will make in the long run. I've used boos block oil before as well which is basically the same idea but a much lower wax level (maybe 1:16 or so) and it seemed marginally better than just plain oil (someone gave me a bottle quite a few years back, I've slathered it on a few cutting boards just because we had it). This is my first foray with the denser mix so we'll see how it goes.
 
Those look great Ryan!:thumb: Wish I could find some wide boards like that.

I've been using beeswax and mineral oil lately too. I bought a small crock pot, add 2 bottles of mineral oil from Walmart ($2/bottle) and then add a cup of beeswax shavings. I bought mine at the local hobby store. They melt into about to consistency of tooth paste. Works great and is easy to put into 4oz mason jars for resale too. The jars are a pretty easy add on sale at shows.
 
Ryan, I'm curious to hear your experience with how well these stand up to mild soap and water. I stopped using the wax from the Beall buffing system on my turnings because any water on the carnuba wax used to produce the final luster left spots that weren't easily removed. For the snack boards I recently made I used Doctor's Woodshop walnut oil and carnuba wax mix and when I washed the piece it immediately dulled up. I coated the piece with the home made walnut oil (four parts) bees wax (one part) mix I use on salad bowls and it seems to repel water a little better and retain more of the luster.
 
Ryan, I'm curious to hear your experience with how well these stand up to mild soap and water. I stopped using the wax from the Beall buffing system on my turnings because any water on the carnuba wax used to produce the final luster left spots that weren't easily removed. For the snack boards I recently made I used Doctor's Woodshop walnut oil and carnuba wax mix and when I washed the piece it immediately dulled up. I coated the piece with the home made walnut oil (four parts) bees wax (one part) mix I use on salad bowls and it seems to repel water a little better and retain more of the luster.

Well.. its an interesting question... and I don't have a good answer yet They still look pretty alright after one wash, but I was getting a smidge more grain raise than I'm entirely happy with so it was pretty hard to do a solid before/after comparison because that was "fuzzing" the results (so to speak). They've all gotten a rinse and are drying out on a rack now, I'll hit them lightly with some 320 or 400 tomorrow and then repeat the experiment.

There was no evidence of spots and the "depth" of the wood still looks pretty good. Water continued to bead up on the surface fairly well as well. The shiny top coat obviously came off some, as mostly expected. The waxier bits do seem to be sitting on the surface perhaps a bit more than I'd like.. Its also been quite cold here so the mix was "seizing" up a bit on application, for the next round I think I'll go with my initial theory and pre-heat the boards a bit before application. This was after washing with HOT water and dawn (not exactly mild soap, but closer to the expected end treatment) with a bit of a scrub followed by a HOT water rinse and a quick towel dry to remove the surface water.

When you say "home made walnut oil (four parts) bees wax (one part) mix" - I'm assuming you mean the mix, not the oil :D What type of walnut oil did you use?
 
....When you say "home made walnut oil (four parts) bees wax (one part) mix" - I'm assuming you mean the mix, not the oil :D What type of walnut oil did you use?

The walnut oil/beeswax recipe came from an old Fine Wood Working article on carving spoons. I started using it on my salad bowls and liked the result. For years I have mixed it using Mahoney's Utility Finish, which Mike says is "100% high linoleic acid walnut oil" from California that's also been heated to remove the proteins that cause nut allergies:
http://bowlmakerinc.com/resources/walnut-oil.html

My last batch of the paste mix was made using a similar type of oil from Doctor's Woodshop because I was out of Mahoney's.
http://doctorswoodshop.com/Products/WalnutFinishingOil.aspx

So far I can't tell the difference.

The product I used on my snack boards and was disappointed in was this one:
http://doctorswoodshop.com/Products/WalnutOilPasteWax.aspx
In re-looking over his site, I notice the Doctor sells a mix specifically for cutting boards, so maybe the walnut oil paste wax mix was not intended for cutting board use. I like the idea of heating the object when applying the mix...probably get better penetration.
 
Ok, yeah so the polymerizing stuff anyway, not raw. I've played around with baking raw walnut oil onto smaller pieces (the polymer formation is accelerated by either heat or oxygen).. it was interesting but not exceptionally productive (time spent better elsewhere perhaps). I'd like to play with making some of my own stand oils at some point, just to see how they work.

It would be interesting to know how well/if the walnut oil polymerized being mixed with the wax like that. I would suspect slower at least as it reacts with oxygen to form the cross linked polymer and it would seem that the wax would slow that down substantially. That reasoning was largely why I punted and just used mineral oil, I figured it wouldn't polymerize very well, but would certainly be interested in notes to the contrary.

As a side note, it would appear that oiling/waxing your cutting boards is a negative as far as bacterial resistance. Wood naturally entrains the bacteria and adding oil/whatever makes it act more like a plastic where the boojums sit on top. In this case I'm more about the appearance anyway so its sort of a side issue (and how much difference it makes in the real world.. not sure :dunno:) but its an interesting note.

The product I used on my snack boards and was disappointed in was this one:
http://doctorswoodshop.com/Products/WalnutOilPasteWax.aspx
In re-looking over his site, I notice the Doctor sells a mix specifically for cutting boards, so maybe the walnut oil paste wax mix was not intended for cutting board use.

Yeah, hard to say what's actually in that one.. A lot of those types of mixes seem to have a fair bit of volatiles so they behave more like regular wax pastes. It says "solvent free" but then "softer than expected" which is contrary to the "carnuba wax" which is hard as the dickens so I don't know what to figure on it.

The uncertainty (and periodically unannounced changing characteristics) of what's in commercial is one reason I keep figuring on formulating my own concoctions. There are however some I don't think you can beat, original waterlox for instance - that stuff is pretty bullet proof it seems.

I like the idea of heating the object when applying the mix...probably get better penetration.

That's the general idea, I've done it on some smaller pieces with a heat gun and beeswax and it definitely got the wood to soak up the wax. Now as to whether or not it was more robust... I'm unconvinced with just beeswax.. I think perhaps with a hint of carnuba with the mineral oil and beeswax as a carrier it might be more resilient but we shall see...

The experimentation continues.
 
This discussion is exactly why I keep looking in on this forum. You guys are just a font of information. And I don't have to do the trials.
Great job .
David
 
nice boards Ryan and interesting finishing discussion thanks Ted for your info. Looked to see what LV carries and i found they have a "made in USA" walnut oil and instructions.

http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=20056&cat=1,190,42942

http://www.leevalley.com/en/html/05Z1323ie.pdf


Rob,
The pdf in your second link contains some interesting info. They say don't use any kind of oil on a kitchen block, just scrub it clean. That supports Ryan's comment on bacterial resistance and I've read at least one scientific study on the wood vs plastic that gives wood the thumbs up. The other interesting thing is the suggestion to cut the walnut oil with mineral spirits to speed drying time. Aren't mineral spirits petroleum based?.... and do I want a petroleum based product on/in my bowl or cutting board? I'm pretty sure I would not want to use turpentine to cut walnut oil either. A turpentine flavored salad?
 
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