Wooden Spoon Material Experiment
My wife loves her wooden spoons, but after many years, they warp and crack and eventually fall apart. So I started wondering what the best material to make a wooden spoon out of might be.
I bought 10 small samples of hardwoods and cut them all to roughly the size that could serve as the bowl of a wooden spoon. So I have 10 pieces of wood roughly 5" long, 2 1/2" wide and 7/16" thick.
I started with those and put them into a large stock pot with 4 gallons of water and started boiling them, adding more water as it evaporated. After 5 hours of boiling, I baked them at 350 F until they were completely dry - about an hour, but not positive. Then I boiled them 5 more hours (adding water), and then baked them dry again.
As you might expect, much of the wood color came out into the water - and colored all the samples. What I did not expect was that the color soaked well into the wood - almost 1/16". The samples below were all sanded back to clean grain and took on very similar coloring - despite being taken down to a clean surface on the belt sander. However, I was just trying to simulate long-term abuse in a kitchen. The coloring is just an interesting sidelight.
The results are as follows:
Cherry: Warping and cracking
Walnut: Slight warping
Basswood: No warping or cracking
Maple: Slight warping, Very slight cracking
Ash: No warping or cracking
Unknown: No warping or cracking
Poplar: Slight warping
Alder: Slight warping, moderate cracking
Birch: Warping, no cracking
Red Oak: Warping and heavier cracking.
About the "Unknown": I labeled each piece with a marker, but the "Before photo" I didn't have a good angle and can't see the printing. After all the boiling, the lettering is difficult-to-impossible to make out. Below is a photo taken and blown up. If anyone can make out the name (or identify from the "before" picture), I'll repost this with the name included.
I looked up the toxicity of wood in: http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/wood-allergies-and-toxicity/
None of the woods listed above mention toxicity, although all of them have the capability of harming us while being worked on. If nothing else, I recommend the site as a good reference for those people who work with exotic or unusual woods.
My wife loves her wooden spoons, but after many years, they warp and crack and eventually fall apart. So I started wondering what the best material to make a wooden spoon out of might be.
I bought 10 small samples of hardwoods and cut them all to roughly the size that could serve as the bowl of a wooden spoon. So I have 10 pieces of wood roughly 5" long, 2 1/2" wide and 7/16" thick.
I started with those and put them into a large stock pot with 4 gallons of water and started boiling them, adding more water as it evaporated. After 5 hours of boiling, I baked them at 350 F until they were completely dry - about an hour, but not positive. Then I boiled them 5 more hours (adding water), and then baked them dry again.
As you might expect, much of the wood color came out into the water - and colored all the samples. What I did not expect was that the color soaked well into the wood - almost 1/16". The samples below were all sanded back to clean grain and took on very similar coloring - despite being taken down to a clean surface on the belt sander. However, I was just trying to simulate long-term abuse in a kitchen. The coloring is just an interesting sidelight.
The results are as follows:
Cherry: Warping and cracking
Walnut: Slight warping
Basswood: No warping or cracking
Maple: Slight warping, Very slight cracking
Ash: No warping or cracking
Unknown: No warping or cracking
Poplar: Slight warping
Alder: Slight warping, moderate cracking
Birch: Warping, no cracking
Red Oak: Warping and heavier cracking.
About the "Unknown": I labeled each piece with a marker, but the "Before photo" I didn't have a good angle and can't see the printing. After all the boiling, the lettering is difficult-to-impossible to make out. Below is a photo taken and blown up. If anyone can make out the name (or identify from the "before" picture), I'll repost this with the name included.
I looked up the toxicity of wood in: http://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/wood-allergies-and-toxicity/
None of the woods listed above mention toxicity, although all of them have the capability of harming us while being worked on. If nothing else, I recommend the site as a good reference for those people who work with exotic or unusual woods.