best wood for a wooden spoon

No, it is because, in my experience, Cherry is a very porous wood and will soak up all kinds of nasties. The wood is very pretty to look at though and I've used it on a couple of decorative projects successfully.

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One of my sons carves spoons, and has done many over the years. He prefers to use fruitwoods such as apple or plum, also likes lilac. He will use maple, buckthorn, and almost any other tightgrained wood. He uses coconut oil as a finish, and sells a lot of his spoons as usable works of art.

I've a large bolt of red oak I'm holding to cut into a dough bowl, another of white oak but I'm leaning more towards the white oak. Porous is fine with me, hope it is with the yeast we use.

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This probably isn't that helpful, but my favorite wooden utensils have been bamboo. Too bad I can't keep my kids from putting them in the dishwasher.

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Who ever says that cherry is toxic should notify the cough syrup companies and stop the madness of feeding it to the sick.


The critical thing in making a spoon or other round turning is drying it slow and even.

What ever will splinter the least when I use it to smack my DC.

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My dad has a portable sawmill and has read that sawdust from some kinds of oak and maybe walnut are toxic. You may want to check it out.

I'd love to carve my own utensils!
Any of you who do make your own are too cool, IMO!

Testing was done to show how bad it was to use wooden cutting boards. The results came and went very quickly. Laws were being past for safety but the truth was that salmonella flourished on the plastic boards and died on the wooden ones. If wood did not naturally defend itself from bacteria they would die. If you have a wood that rots quickly then you probably have a wood not great for health concerns. The woods like walnut do have toxins but they are not what is going to bother you in food prep.
Not talking about exotics but most problems for the normal woods are irritants to the lungs in dust. Before you jump on me I believe that the fine people here understand the Sumac and such are not a part of this conversation.
I use oak for boards because it is one of the best for health Spoons I like poplar and bass but hard maple and cherry great for scraping.

Nellie, I say the same thing. My bamboo utensils have lasted 20+ years. I'd get more if I knew where to find them.

Thanks to my son and the 24 acre condo/townhouse/apt. complex where he does maint. work I've got rights to a butt load of maples toppled (sp?) as a result of the recent Her-a-cane Ike. The one I'm working on now is a 'no longer standing dead and seasoned maple'. Filled the back of my pickup with the top. I'm looking at about 65' of main trunk left if I can get it all. I should have plenty for turning as well as a nice stash of maple for hog smoking. I've my fingers crossed that I'll find me a couple nice hickory I can set off for the smoker.

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"Only the rocks [and really embarassing moments] live forever"

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands..." tick-tick-tick

I have a "bread spoon" that I purchased in the mid 80's that is made of Monkeypod, but unless you live in Hawaii where it grows abundantly, I guess you'd be SOL for this wood... After all these years, this is still my favorite wooden spoon.

RVcook

hard rock maple for cutting BOARDS AND WOODEN UTENSILS use mineral oil to seal them

Mineral oil for something that's going to be in contact with food?!?

Kathleen

I would make certain the pallets you use do not have the "bug"stamp on them because they have been treated with nasty chemicals.

Source; Major trading partners of the United States have now adopted ISPM-15 (the guidelines for regulating wood packaging material in international trade.) ISPM-15 calls for treatment of wood packaging material to eliminate the risk for most quarantined forest pests.

If your company has questions about “bug-free” wood packaging regulations for a specific shipping destination, contact us. We work diligently to provide up-to-date information on the current regulatory requirements.

If you require certified packaging for your export shipments then heat-treated (HT) compliant materials will be used. The finished wood packaging will be marked with the official IPPC stamp (shown below) licensed exclusively to Commercial Box & Pallet showing we are a Certified Wood Packaging manufacturing facility.

I once spent about ten hours researching what oil to use on wooden spoons and cutting boards and the like. In the end, it seems that about 90% of the information I found suggested mineral oil. But I now use strictly walnut oil. I seem to recall reading some stuff about mineral oil that gave me the willies. but I can't remember the specifics.

So I asked this question of Michael "skeeter" Pilarski and captured his response on video and pushed it up to youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/paulwheaton12#p/u/0/_n9efMGsRos

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Mineral oil is also used as a laxative...you buy it in the pharmacy dept. You need several glugs for the laxative to take effect. It also does not go rancid as a vegetable oil could which is I use it on my butcher block.
My DH is a woodcarver (mostly birds of prey and song birds), but once when we were picking up deadfall for our woodburner, there was a felled walnut tree. He took a few logs into the basement (where the woodburner is) and dried it out for some time. He has made me many cooking utensils that have survived for years, even through the dishwasher. He also made me a ginormous wooden spoon/paddle thats about three feet long.

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If you are talking large bowls, they make a round disk edged with chainsaw links that will hog out wood (or flesh) very rapidly. It fits into a 4" grinder.

I have a friend who is a wood carver. Just last week he told me that lilac is popular with spoon carvers.

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Libertarindependent

One summer I made a whole lot of wooden utensils out of sugar maple. That was 25 years ago. I still have some of them and they're in great condition and I use them regularly. Very hard wood with a fine grain. I also made some cutting boards out of cherry around that time and still have those and use them daily.

On the other hand, over the years I've bought some wooden spoons made out of a soft wood at the store and those only lasted maybe five years.

I know nothing about the theory, just my experience.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

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