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Poplar bowl

During midsummer this year, I heard that a friend was removing a few poplar trees from his property–a couple were dead or dying, and one was in the way of a shed he was planning to build. Being the wood scrounger that I am, I asked if I could come and take a few chunks.

This wood was very wet (you could see and feel the dampness of it when I was sawing the logs into blanks), so it had to be rough turned, coated with sealer to slow the drying and prevent cracking, and then set aside for a good while. But it was worth the wait. This is the first one I finish turned.

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You can see a bit of curl figuring on the rim in this photo, and there are more patches of that on the inside. 9 1/2″ diameter, 3″ high. Walnut oil finish.

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Something to do while waiting

One of my kids’ favorites when they were growing up was the PBS show “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” And one of his songs that we adopted for our own started with the line “Let’s think of something to do while we’re waiting.”

Monday was our oldest daughter’s due date, and from a phone call earlier in the day, we had a feeling that things were going to start happening. So to keep my mind occupied, I mounted a large chunk of green ash (rescued from the curbside in our neighborhood) on the lathe.

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The grain and color is everything I could have hoped for, and when you look inside…

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…there’s some subtle curl.

11 1/2″ diameter by 3 3/8″ high. Walnut oil finish.

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Work in progress: Large green ash bowl

I rescued a few large green ash logs off the curb last week, and while most of it is destined for our firewood pile (green ash is dandy firewood), I sawed a few bowl blanks from one of the larger pieces.

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Update: Here’s the outside cleaned up, sanded to 400 grit, and with an application of walnut oil finish. (I’m planning to add a pyrography texture between those dark lines.)

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Update 2: I didn’t expect to see that much curl figure in this.

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Dough bowl

I modeled this silver maple bowl after the stoneware bowl my mother always used for making bread dough. Mom’s is a bit larger than this, but I think I came pretty close to the basic proportions (although I’m operating purely from memory).

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This was twice turned, and after the rough bowl dried, it was the most lopsided one I’ve done yet.

8 3/4″ diameter by 3″ high. Walnut oil finish.

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Natural edge American mountain ash bowl

American mountain ash (a member of the rowan family) is a common decorative tree in our community, but it’s susceptible to disease if it’s injured. A neighbor was slowly losing theirs, so my wife volunteered me to take it down for them.

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The branch this one came from was about 7 inches in diameter, with a smaller branch coming off the side, making for a mitten-shaped bowl. (I like the oddball ones like this.) The wood cut nicely, so I’m looking forward to doing more of this stuff.

8 1/4″ long by 6″ wude by 2″ high. Teak oil finish.

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“But is it clean?” Food safety and wood ware

In yesterday’s post, a commenter raised the issue of the safety of wood ware.

“I was told growing up that wood cutting boards, and wooden utensils can get scratches or grooves in them through normal wear and tear. These grooves can trap food particles in them and go bad causing food health issues.”

That’s a great point to bring up. It applies especially when you’re talking about something like a cutting board, which will get a bunch of small cuts criss-crossing the surface as you use it. But when you consider the fact that wood is porous, even without marring the surface with knife cuts, won’t bacteria find lots of places to hide and multiply in wooden bowls, cutting boards, and utensils?

Researchers at the University of California – Davis, led by Dean O. Cliver, PhD, took a look at the safety of wood and plastic cutting boards.

“Our safety concern was that bacteria such as Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella, which might contaminate a work surface when raw meat was being prepared, ought not remain on the surface to contaminate other foods that might be eaten without further cooking. We soon found that disease bacteria such as these were not recoverable from wooden surfaces in a short time after they were applied, unless very large numbers were used.”

There appears to be some anti-bacterial factor in wood that prevents bacteria from living and multiplying. What exactly that mechanism is wasn’t clear from Cliver’s team’s research, but their conclusion is that “wooden cutting boards are not a hazard to human health, but plastic cutting boards may be.”

So you can relax. Use good hygiene on your wooden bowls, cutting boards, and utensils–for example, wash them with warm soapy water, and don’t use the same cutting board for fruits and vegetables right after cutting meat. But the bottom line is that you have more to worry about, in terms of food safety, from the plastics in your kitchen.