Food grade stain and newbie questions.

Use a good closed grained hard wood. Hard maple is a very popular choice. I would not apply a stain. You could use the food safe "Salad bowl finish" sold at woodcraft...

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Would red oak work?

What is "salad bowl stain"

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Any finish on the market is safe once it has dried. A stain will look pretty bad after it has been used for a while; probably not a good idea.

The traditional wood is sycamore, though maple is more common now.

I wouldn't trust any of the wood stains to be food-safe. If you really want to color it somehow, maybe you could experiment with some food coloring on some scraps of the wood that you will be using for your project. If that works and you are happy with it, then use it. There are several food-safe clear finishes available, but I've never seen a food-safe wood stain that was advertised as that. Every butcher block that I've ever seen was natural unfinished wood.

I feel like an idiot. Here's what I meant to say: Do you think Cypress would be a decent choice? I can get my hands on some of that, but I don't know how appropriate it would be. It's pretty solid stuff, and fairly water resistant, but I don't know if there is any sort of chemical in there that would make food preparation dangerous.

just made a lot of endgrain cutting boards (same a butcher block but smaller). Use mineral oil as the finish 4 or 5 coats. flood the oil on the whole block and let sit for 15 minute or more then flood it again.After the last coat wipe off the excess and buff with a clean rag. As for the stain none is needed if you use different woods in a pattern. Woods that I have used successfully are hard maple,cherry,honey locust, beech,sycamore small strips of walnut(some people have allergic reaction , no one I know has though) stay away from the oily exotics.I just posted one on alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking.

hope this helps

len

You can buy food grade mineral oil which is good for kitchen cutting boards. Glenn

You could use a marble tile, but it will REALLY do a number on the edge of a sharp knife. And the knife will scratch it to the point that you won't be happy with it.

You could make a frame and put some of those plastic cutting boards in it, then change the thing when it looks tacky.

Walt C

NO. Red Oak is very open grained.

NOT salad bowl stain. I wrote "salad bowl finish"

Here is a link:

You need to find a Lumber Yard.

I did a search on cypress and toxic. Two results say it is non-toxic; I didn't see any that claimed otherwise. Probably safe then.