Timeline for Finish cutting board with shellac on bottom and oil on top
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 30, 2020 at 22:12 | vote | accept | Guy | ||
| Sep 29, 2020 at 17:21 | answer | added | Caleb | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 15:22 | comment | added | Graphus | Glad I surmised (haha, guessed) correctly ^_^ In that case my comments above hold. If this were butcher block it can be treated very differently because end grain is very absorbent. Long-grain surfaces aren't, and penetration of any sort of finishing material is surprisingly shallow. | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 13:51 | comment | added | Guy | @Graphus - correct - this is a long-grain board. | |
| Sep 28, 2020 at 6:03 | comment | added | Graphus | I forgot to check one thing, is this a long-grain board or built up from small pieces, with end-grain working surfaces? I've been presuming that this is a long-grain board you're working with here, rather than butcher block. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 18:43 | comment | added | Graphus | "What would be a more appropriate finish if I wanted to seal and protect the bottom/sides? " They don't need sealing (or 'sealing' — as it's commonly used it doesn't mean what it says) + they don't need more protection than the top gets. While it is possible to completely waterproof wood (e.g. boats) you wouldn't want to do this here because the top will get wet, so you'll get differential swelling and drying, top v bottom. This is the very thing that makes boards that sit on a puddle of water bow, and sometimes crack (occasionally catastrophically, literally the board is a write-off). | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 15:05 | comment | added | Ashlar♦ | I have used a mixture of food/medical grade mineral oil and beeswax (4:1 ratio) recoating it whenever the surface dries out and I want to restore color. As Graphus points out a board can get along fine without any finish for decades. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 14:59 | comment | added | Guy | Thanks for that advice @Graphus - in that case I might oil the whole board because it seems dry and I want to add a deeper color to it to bring out the color and grain. What would be a more appropriate finish if I wanted to seal and protect the bottom/sides? Would polyurethane be best in this situation? | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 8:01 | comment | added | Graphus | Nah, don't do this. Shellac is famous for how little protection it provides from water, and TBH it's just not that tough. It's great stuff for what it's used for (like many woodworkers I'd be lost without shellac) but this isn't a suitable application for it. Anyway that aside, what makes you think the mesquite needs protection? I mean literally, at all. I have a pine cutting board — yes, pine — that's gotta be something like 5 times softer than mesquite and despite being older than many member here it's holding up to daily use and scrubbing with boiling water just fine. | |
| Sep 27, 2020 at 0:20 | history | asked | Guy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |