I've become minorly obsessed with conditioning wood
I had a cutting board made from some nice wood, but which was starting to lose its bright appearance.
A bit of research later, and I get some food-safe mineral oil and wax to restore the surface. Long story short, I was so impressed by how my cutting board came back to life, now I'm looking for any excuse to touch up all the wood in our house. I don't even mind if I clean the cutting board and wash off some of the wax, because then I have an excuse to apply another layer. There's something fun about buffing and polishing a surface.
I'm thinking of getting into woodworking just so I can do this more. I don't even really want to make anything, just apply a bunch of tung oil to a random plank and then wax it to a shine.
42 replies
I find polishing my wood a few too many times in close frequency gives me soreness of the shoulders and elbow. Doing a little jerking off first can help loosen up for the important bits.
Whats your tung oil routine?
Also using shampoo on my wood makes it burn like a motherfucker.
Clean Energy!
Solid advice.
This is why I came to lemmy.
nice
I love doing this to random items.
I loathe doing this to the deck outside.
Why is the deck different?
The gratification is not as instant.
I've never conditioned any wood before. Why is the deck not as instant gratification?
It just takes much more work and time to complete the job! Something relatively smaller, like a cutting board, can be done quicker.
I don't know, sanding it takes days for starters.
I have a friend who was refinishing and sanding his deck.
Between starting and finishing the sanding, his neighbour tore down and installed a whole new deck. He said he had never felt like such a chump.
Weak initial dopamine hit. It’s a certain fail.
Have you been introduced to cast iron?
If not, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Oh yesssss. Get middling quality cast iron, grind it flat, and reseason. A couple of hours of work and you have primo quality cast iron cookware.
Also: you can clean cast iron with soap.
What do you use to grind it flat? Mines got some crators I'd like to get rid of and didnt know this was an option.
A random orbit palm sander, or really any other sander that's round, will do just fine.
Obligatory mention: ![email protected]
Well, that's an instant subscribe. Thx!
As someone that's been doing woodworking for the last couple of years: buy a pack of sandpaper of various grits to smooth and watco natural or medium walnut color danish oil to finish. Will cost you like $40 on Amazon or at a hardware store, but will let you see how you like the hobby without having to learn a ton. If you like it, get a saw and a 2x4 and make some simple little household object like a key hook or poop knife. Once you've started making handy little things for yourself, you'll get sucked in and develop a nuanced taste in glues and sandpaper while spending all of your money on the "one more tool I need" and growing to fully occupy all space in the garage. The custom furniture is a nice plus.
Is a poop knife what it sounds like?
Do you not have a poop knife at your house?
What do you use in stead?
Poop hand
No, it's a specific type of croquet hammer. Don't worry about it.
I've got a bunch of wooden utensils I need to do this to. I'm more of a wax/oil paste guy myself though. Guess I know what I'm up to tomorrow afternoon
Get you some quality wood handled tools. If it has that shiny slick varnish whatever on the handle, scrape that shit off with a sharp knife and season the fuck out of those handles!
Wait till you discover conditioning leather
Agreed. Did my wood knife handles recently. Gotta do my spatulas, maybe some spoons even.
Are you me? This is blow-for-blow exactly what has happened to me over the last year or so. I am hanging on by a thread against the desire to get into woodworking, someone send help.
I've been woodworking for a few years, I've been tempted to start a Peertube channel about it, and I'd be tempted to do woodworking for beginners kind of content.
I have a background in flight instruction, I work well when I have a student to work with, would you (or @[email protected] ) be interested in somehow collaborating on something like that? Record some shop-to-shop video calls or something?
I made bbq from scratch a couple days ago. I'm talking boiling the tomatoes down with garlic and onions, brown sugar, fermented tamarinds, little liquid smoke. It's silly but I enjoyed myself.
Try the barbecue pork shoulder recipe from serious eats, it's UNBELIEVABLE
My wife would love if I did this to her cutting boards. You mind sharing what oils and wax you used?
I got a mixture called "Butcher block conditioner" for food-safe surfaces, and another called "Feed-n-wax" for surfaces that don't touch food.
Thanks!
Join us over at [email protected], which seems to be the place for woodworking on the fediverse.
![email protected] for the lazy and interested
What wax did you use?
See if there is a woodworker you can team up with. Sanding and finishing is loathed and dreaded by us, at least in my carpentry circle. We want the cutting and glueing and clamping jobs.
I don't really mind sanding, I tend to put on some headphones and zone out. It can be a lot on big jobs. Planing and scraping can reduce the amount of sanding you need to do.
I often look forward to the process of at least starting the finish because I like watching the grain pop out.
But yes shortly after vacuuming sanding is probably the first major task I'd assign to an apprentice.
I have a bunch of magnets and I want to put bumpers on them for protection, and make some kind of sliding puck game. Could this technique shine up something and make it slippery like a shuffleboard surface?