All Replies on One Big-Ass Butcher Block

I can only imagine what was the original design for when they came up with the idea of “lets make it 24” thick… that should be enough shouldn’t it? ...”

-- ㊍ When in doubt - There is no doubt - Go the safer route.

“This block is a solid chunk of wood and is heavy. ” yeah, I’ll bet it is heavy! I am so curious about what it was initially built for!

-- Kay - Just a girl who loves wood.

True enough, PurpleV! Brontosaurus steaks, maybe? I recall an old chopping block in an Antiques shop, it was probably 18” X 18” X 18”, on stout turned legs. It had one corner worn down, maybe 3” deep, some poor sap in a Butcher shop probably stood in one spot for eight hours a day cleaving pork chops. What a life.. Kookaburra: Yeah, probably enough board-feet of maple in that cube…hmmm $55 bucks… Too bad they ’butchered’ it with the steel braces… that couldn’t be original to the piece, could it?
We need the “Handplanes of Your Dreams” gang to give this block a good smoothing!

-- Einstein: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." I'm Poopiekat!!

Here’s the one in my kitchen. 30” x 30” x 16” thick solid dovetailed hard maple. We had to get this out of a basement.

-- It must be jelly baby, cause jam don't shake like that...

That is the biggest chopping block I’ve seen… assuming that it’s one huge SOLID piece!

Are you going to buy it?

You could remove the bars and hand plane it down…
... the hardest part would be rotating it so you could plane the sides! LOL

-- Have Fun! Joe Lyddon - Alta Loma, CA USA - Home: http://www.WoodworkStuff.net ... My Small Gallery: http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?ppuser=1389&cat=500"

it’s a old butcher block from the “cleaver” era when they were permitted to use wood. periodically they would take the scars out with a very coarse steel brush, hence the thickness (they lasted forever).

wow, Hairy!! That’s huge, and reminds me of the one I saw in the antiques shop! I love the pumpkin color; did you have to flatten it before putting it in your kitchen? Thank You for sharing, and for taking the time to post this excellent pic! Wonder if this advertised block had a stand at one time… Joe: Hmmm, I dunno if I’m going to buy it; though 100 BF +/- of maple for $55 doesn’t sound too bad, heck I’d have to bring it to a sawyer though! teejk: who knows how many people were sickened by the e-coli, salmonella and other nasties lurking in this wooden surface! it’s the perfect surface for putting a corian or acrylic cutting board/chopping block on!!

-- Einstein: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." I'm Poopiekat!!

poopie…my grandpa cut meat on wood, my dad cut meat on wood, I cut meat on wood (all back in the days when the meat rooms were not refrigerated and I’ll add that we had one of those thick tables except ours had massive turned legs). That small table didn’t get used much in my day but our primary table was wood also…probably only 2” thick.

We were careful to keep the tables cleaned when we moved from chicken to pork to beef (we used a lot of bleach and scalding hot water). And of course everything got scrubbed at shut-down time (probably took an hour between the saw/grinder/tables and floors).

Nobody died. Somehow I wonder whether our super-hygenic environments are bad for people in the long run.

A big, bad chopping block is on my list of future projects.

That’s just how I brought it home. The owner told me it was in a local grocery store that closed back in the early 60’s.
It has no deep marks, just some scratches. The only minus is the poly finish. It takes 3 guys and a case of beer to move it.

-- It must be jelly baby, cause jam don't shake like that...

In the mid 60’s, (dating myself), I worked in a restaurant that was Chinese food/steakhouse for years while in high school and college. Same town, same restaurant. The Chinese cooks we had used one of these. I can remember them whacking away at big hunks of beef with those Chinese cleavers. The cooks were all on the short side so this was just the right height. They would scrape it down everyday, wash it with warm water, and oil it down again. Can’t imagine what was living on the surface!! When I went to Shanghai, I was sure to bring back a few of those cleavers, and my wife loves them.

-- Paul, Tennessee, http://www.tsunamiguitars.com

Have you guys read any of the articles debunking that wooden blocks harbor more bacteria than plastic boards?

Here's an example

I’ve read the actual study some time ago but couldn’t find it via a quick search.

It’s main premiss is: Yes, wood obsorbs more bacteria, but when we test both plastic and wood the wood has less living bacteria. Meaning that bacteria cannot survie very long.

I’m considering making a big boy similar to hairy’s some day.

-- I came - I sawed - I over-built

Hell, how many LJs have made and use wooden cutting boards? We’re not dropping like flies.

And for crying out loud, the meat gets cooked. There’s a reason we do that.

Here is the actual study

Nature, 1. Man made materials, 0.

-- I came - I sawed - I over-built

Woodcraft magazine at the start of the year had a nice, large butcher block project in it. I’m still struggling with if it should be cherry or applewood, have enough of both except for thick pieces for the legs. Or maybe a mix of both.

-- --Rev. Russ in NY-- A posse ad esse

todd…you confirm my theory! (and Derosa not sure apple/cherry would be able to withstand the beating that maple can take…they made bowling lanes out of maple).

my dad sold the family biz decades ago to a guy that built a newer/bigger store…I continued to cut meat for a year or so in the new store until I graduated from college…new code dictated 38F room, all plastic cutting surfaces.

and now I watch some of those travel channel shows where raw chickens are hanging in open markets. they survive but we can’t have open bin peanuts in my store now. hmmm…

Thats an amazing block PK. I want one in my house, dont know where I would put it but it would be bad aas.

-- Mauricio - Woodstock, GA - "Confusion is the Womb of Learning, with utter conviction being it's Tomb" Prof. T.O. Nitsch

It appears that the one in the original photo is made from 2×6’s or 2×8’s.

I made one last year for my shop. It is one solid block of white oak. The top measures 24” x 38”, and it is 32” tall. It weighs a little under 1000 lbs. I cut pockets into the bottom to allow me to move it with either a pallet jack or a forklift.

-- Scott, North Carolina, www.quartersawnoak.com

Scsmith42: Wow, thanks for posting a pic of another stunning example of butcher block! I’m amazed at seeing a single block of wood that large. It’s inspiring, thanks for sharing!

-- Einstein: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." I'm Poopiekat!!

That’s a massive piece of wood! What was it for?

Somehow I wonder whether our super-hygenic environments are bad for people in the long run.

Well, as a matter of fact...

… the ‘hygiene hypothesis’, which contends that such auto-immune diseases are more common in the developed world where the prevalence of antibiotics and antibacterials reduce children’s exposure to microbes.

-- "Find out what you cannot do and then go do it!"

That just AWESOME!

... you mean you can’t just pick it up and move it? LOL

-- Have Fun! Joe Lyddon - Alta Loma, CA USA - Home: http://www.WoodworkStuff.net ... My Small Gallery: http://www.ncwoodworker.net/pp/showgallery.php?ppuser=1389&cat=500"

thanks EE…I’ll add that we now receive warnings from our septic tank people about excessive use of anti-bacterial soaps! Seems it kills the bacteria needed to make a septic system work properly.

Thanks, EEE! Hey, haven’t seen you much, lately! Hmmm… so if anti-bacteria soaps diminish our natural germ-fighting ability, why do they not diminish the germs’ ability to survive? Oh, I remember, it was about the Federal government banning Hexachlorophene 20 years ago, the preferred germ-fighting soap of its day. This is the same conundrum as using radiation to fight cancer, where it was radiation exposure that caused the cancer in the first place. Or, more succinctly, applying ice to a head injury after a skater fell and hit his head on the ice. What a world.

-- Einstein: "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." I'm Poopiekat!!

poopie…your bubble is on order (I ordered the double HEPA filter pack for you). Let’s get back on track…wood cutting boards have been used in commercial settings until around the early 1980’s I think. Properly maintained and cleaned, they worked quite well even if they might have put a small amount of bacteria into the product.

Fishinbo, a few years ago I obtained a 13’ long, 54” diameter (small end) white oak log that I ultimately quartersawed. The top 4’ of the log had some defects in it where large branches sprouted from the trunk, so I removed this section from the main log before milling. The cutoff portion sat in my woodyard for over a year after we milled the main log, and one day last fall I decided to make a solid block for the shop from it.

It’s a great solid block table, and provides me with a surface that I can use if I need to beat on something and don’t want to abuse my workbench.

-- Scott, North Carolina, www.quartersawnoak.com

Scott, pictures or it didn’t happen ;-)

-- Mauricio - Woodstock, GA - "Confusion is the Womb of Learning, with utter conviction being it's Tomb" Prof. T.O. Nitsch

Mauricio, there is a photo of the solid block that I referenced in a previous post that I made about 9 posts up.

Below are photos of me using a crane to pick up a similarly sized red oak log and setting it up for the sawmill, and subsequently milling it.

-- Scott, North Carolina, www.quartersawnoak.com

How did I miss that? Wow thats amazing! Big bragging rights on that!

-- Mauricio - Woodstock, GA - "Confusion is the Womb of Learning, with utter conviction being it's Tomb" Prof. T.O. Nitsch

Free samples required or you didn’t really cut it? Half the log shipped to my door should suffice as proof. Wish I had your saw.

-- --Rev. Russ in NY-- A posse ad esse