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The Best Food-Safe Finish May Be None At All - Fine Woodworking Article
(www.finewoodworking.com)
Who found this out? The CIA? Seems clear to me.
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
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But then the wood cracks and starts to fall apart? Or perhaps this only happens with glued projects?
The article discusses glue joints. Did you make it through the whole article?
Hey hey watch your blood pressure. I'm sure he didn't mean it.
There are a lot of questions I have.
I found a more scholarly article credited to several authors including Robinson which specifically focuses on wood's absorption of microbes depending on the finish applied, testing no finish, mineral oil, and raw linseed oil, and different amounts of applications thereof.
This study mentions the end grain structure of the four wood species tested. The test samples were "4.5 x 4.5 x 2 cm with the tangential face on the broad side." Dafuq does "tangential" mean in this context? As far as I can tell the science hippy bullshit boils down to "we put bacteria on the wood, and then we looked to see if we could find any bacteria on the wood after 0, 1 and 24 hours."
Both the study and the article assume relying on wood's "natural anti-microbial properties" and only rinsing with cold water. I've been oiling my cutting boards and briefly washing them with warm water and soap. Who cares if bacteria is still on the surface if I wash the damn thing with Dawn?
"Cross-contamination is a myth, but if you're gonna cook meat but not veggies cut the veggies first." What?
Does "tangential" mean plain sawn, quarter sawn or end grain? The FineWoodworking article shows pictures of a simple plank showing plain sawn/cathedral grain. The article says the wood species tested were chosen for their differing end grain structures. But then the article talks about avoiding glued-up boards because the glue is a problem for the wicking action.
"Conditioning is a myth {...} conflicting grain orientations can also lead to cracking and warping after repeated wet/dry cycles."
Seri Robinson is a Ph.D. of woodology and I'm just some guy with a table saw, but...I'm not sure the science is done here.
Tangential on the broad face would mean it’s flat sawn (plain sawn). Like how woodworkers care about tangential vs radial shrinkage of wood species.
TIL thanks
i used food-safe oils in the past such as sunflower oil, especially for outdoor objects. for indoor-objects, i sometimes leave them without oil, but it does get more stains over time.
Just about everyone including the article above warns against most natural plant oils because they can go rancid.
So wood absorbs the microbes where they eventually suffocate and die, according to this article. But is there then a buildup of dead microbes (and their waste products)?
Microbes are usually totally fine. You are full of them, the world is full of them. Don't panic.
Dehydrate and die is more accurate
We live in a sea of dead and alive microbes, it's fine. Cooking food kills them and we consume them with every meal
I'm not so much concerned as interested, in this person's proposed model, what happens to this accumulated detritus. Maybe it's just that it's negligible. But it must accumulate
The illustrations seem to indicate that stains and dead microbes accumulate in the middle of the wood, deep below the surface. It would be interesting to slice an old wood cutting board in half and see the accumulated stains!
That penetration is super exaggerated. Ever cut through a stained (i.e. pigment-stained) board? Board painted with a water-based paint? Those paint pigment particles are same scale as microbes, so you should expect them to penetrate to similar depth. Surface cleaning and routine abrasion get rid of most of it. Go over the surface with a scraper - take off 20-50 microns - and you're pretty much down to virgin wood.
You're on to.something here. And you're right: that illustration probably distorted my understanding of the process
Nobody says You can't wash the thing occasionally