Rolling pin finishes

Have a student finishing a rolling pin. What do we put on it as a finish that is food safe?

Mineral oil would probably work best. What kind of wood is it turned from? Just curious...

I recently made one for my wife. After putting my thinking cap on, I applied a beeswax finish. The carrier (turpentine) gassed off, of course, leaving the wax to seal the surface. The downside of an oil is that flour will stick to it and a clean rolling pin is desirable. The other option is to put nothing on it.

No finish is the best for a rolling pin

No finish. Hopefully you are using a hard wood like beech or the american equivalent. Get it snaded as smooth as you can then wetb it and sand it again. Whatever finish you use will wear off pretty quickly anyway.

Pete

No finish.

IMHO I would coat it with cookie dough.

I turned a Yew one for the mother in law,

laurence moughan said:

I turned a Yew one for the mother in law,

Click to expand...

Nice of yew.

some input

i am not a turner but this student he is refering to is specail, i got to see what he started and was told what he has done in the past and under what restrictions he is working under... this is one specail kid!!!! so if you have any further explantaions to help him out it would be great... i am not sure how far you would need to go on grits and maybe some more details would be helpful.. just asking acouple questions in behave of jon he is probally back teachin,,,,, thanks.. i think it is cherry,, maybe apple

Anything that you turn that is going to be in contact with food needs to be a safe wood. Laburnum, yew, iroko etc are out as is any spalted wood. Ideally, if you are going to use a finish use a food safe one. or better still none at all. Here in the old country you can buy food safe finishes specifically for purpose but some people use oils such as walnut oil and plain vegetable oil but these can stagnate and go sour. Best bet is to finish to the highest level you can and leave plain stipulating to the recipient to wash carefully after each use and dry thoroughly. The biggest hazard is with anything with end grain where bugs etc can get left in the grain in which case scrubbing is needed as with butchers blocks. Items such as rolling pins and mortar & pestles that have hard contact with food stuffs need to be scrubbed but general salad bowls etc are usually OK just washed as normal.

Pete