Replies

1. 
   ysu65 | Apr 06, 2021 06:19am | #1

   Several things: Red oak is ring porous and not a choice I would use for an end grain butcher block. White oak would probably OK. Cutting boards will get wet and hide glue is not waterproof. TB III would be my choice. W/R to 'Food Safe' adhesives, exposure would be from cutting off a chunk of a glue line and eating it, or chemical extraction from a moist material on a glue line. Personally I think such exposure is very remote.

   I look forward to other opinions on this subject.

2. 
   Mike_H3 | Apr 06, 2021 08:35am | #2

   I agree with ysu65. Hide glue is water soluble and repeated cleanings of the butcher block will certainly cause the glue near the surface to fail creating a risk of food contamination. As for choice of wood I would choose hard maple over anything else. My second choice would be walnut if I wanted a darker look.

3. 
   Cayman | Apr 06, 2021 10:29am | #3

   I agree do not use hide glue. Furniture restorers love it because it disassembles with moisture and temperature.

   Avoid any glue that will fail under these conditions and I would recommend never place it in the dishwasher.

   I agree also, do not use oak. Wrong type of wood.

   My brother is a chef and had a favourite wooden cutting board. One day it fell on the floor and broke in two. There was a large void inside full of live insects. To this day I cannot make a wooden cutting board.

4. 
   lat_axe | Apr 06, 2021 10:41am | #4

   Yes, I think you lads are right to think that water will eventually soften hide glue, even if it isn't always splashed on to such a board. (I have a board used for bread cutting, for example, that's never used for anything else).

   There's still the question of what was used to glue such butcher blocks in past times, well before the advent of PVA, epoxy and other modern glues. I believe butcher blocks were used back to Elizabethan times at least ...... I bet those Romans had a few too!

   But better safe than sorry, though. There's a new bottle of Titebond 3 in the shed which seems made for the job. It's only drawback is that it can be more visible if it gets down the end grain too much during glue-up, so even the block plane and sander doesn't take it all off. I do have one such board I made where that happened and those pale pacthes of glue-soaked fibres still annoy me. :-)

   ***********
   The wood to be used is European oak out of the remnants of a kitchen worktop. European oak is more durable than even American white oak (English oak is still evident in many an Elizabethan house, for example) and was used in Britain for butcher blocks along with beech.

   Of the many butcher blocks I've made for our own house, my favourite is that made from iroko. That too was ex-kitchen worktop and is very tough indeed. Its oils are said to have antiseptic properties, along with the oils of some other woods used for kitchen stuff such as walnut and teak.

   I do have a butcher block made from hard maple - offcuts of an old Victorian Lancashire mill machine-floor, where it was used because it was tougher than anything else when it came to resisting the degradations handed out by huge cotton mill machines thumping and thundering their immense weight up and down for years on end. A friend bought a whole floor's worth from a demolished mill to outfit every room in his house but had some bits left over for my butcher block.

   He became expert at extracting hidden nails made of soft iron, that kept the unglued tongue & groove boards from coming apart. No mean skill to have, that.

   Lataxe