Food grade finishes?

[Charlie Harley]

What finishes can be used on salad bowls? I've been trying Danish oil but having mixed results and uneven finishes. Yes, I'm still practicing with it, but are there other options?

What about salt and pepper shakers? Does it make a difference that the "food" is a dry product vs. salad with dressing?

Thank you for answering a new guy's questions.

 

[dkulze]

Hey Charlie,

There is actually a product out there called, wait for it, wait for it, Salad Bowl Finish. It's a eurythane soaking oil (soaks in, not just surface) and hardens to a polymer finish.

The general understanding I've run into is that any polymerizing oil, including the eurythane oils, is basically food safe once it has fully cured. This means giving it a significant time to outgas all the volitile solvents. Significant means 30 to 90 days. What's left behind is basically a plastic and is pretty nonreactive. I'd imagine you'd have to eat a pretty whopping big amount of it to be at any risk, much more than you'll ever ingest through wear.

For salad bowls, two alternatives are walnut oil and mineral oil. Polymerized walnut oil is oil that has been fully filtered to remove all protiens (that's what folks are allergic to) and cooked to make it a polymerizing oil (an oil that hardens into a natural plastic with exposure to air). This isn't the hardest finish in the world but it works well for salad bowls and wooden implements.

Mineral oil in a fully nonreacting, non polymerizing oil. They actually sell it as a laxative since you can't digest it and eating a few spoonfuls acts as a lubricant in your system. Once again, using it on a bowl results in ingesting only insignificant amounts so you won't be running to the toidy 10 minutes after dinner. The up side of mineral oil is that it soaks in and makes the wood pretty liquid proof, preventing buildup of food in the wood and subsequent food poisoning. The down side is that, since it never dries, the wood will always look dull and wet. For a salad bowl, if you choose your wood right, this is not a problem. My big bowl is ash and looks quite nice with mineral oil, as do my cutting boards. The one other aspect of mineral oil is that you need to reapply it regularly. Not a prob, as a bottle costs 99 cents at Walgreens.

For pepper mills, use a eurythane finish. The amount of material that will be abraided by the pepper or salt is miniscule. Once again, give it an extended period to cure so that your pepper doesn't taste like toluline.

Finally, for washing salad bowls, a big handful of kosher salt and a bit of water to make a paste. Rub around thoroughly and rinse. Removes odor and sterilizes nicely.

Have fun,
Dietrich

 

[John Nicholas]

Food Safe Finish

Flexner maintains that any finish is Food Safe when cured. So Dietrich's estimate of 30 - 90 days is applicable for almost anything.

Remember, it is not the finish that causes problems - it is the solvent. The solvent disappears - evaporates leaving the finish. The difference is the amount of time.

RR uses oil only. He discusses at one point that the 200 year old turned objects with the wonderful patina - were oil finished and have held up over time.

BLO can be wonderful.

John

 

[MichaelMouse]

Salad bowls will have salad oil finishes eventually, just as popcorn bowls will have popcorn oil finishes.

As to what's "safe," it's in the mind of the purchaser. You can test on anything you want, spending years in research, but one soap star on the Oprah show overrides all of it.

Lot of the confusing scientific stuff went into this, http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=175.300 which says what you can't break into chemicals (digest) doesn't seem to hurt anything you can.

Non-curing oils present opportunities for truly dangerous stuff to find shelter in the fluid, dissolve odor and collect dirt. Curing finishes help slow the absorbtion of both oils and water, as well as things contained therein. Free access to air in storage ensures that oxidation of the residual salad oils is complete, preventing rancid smells. A wipe with vinegar is a good alternative to salt. Old boys used salt to sterilize the butcher block, but it was left there to gather water and seek out bacterial cells to lyse on its own. Unless they were dissolved in the tallow, of course.