Gluing Purpleheart for cutting boards

The Red Oak is way to porous to be used safely for a cutting board,
lot's o' places for water and bacteria to hide and grow.

I'd question the White too, even though it has good water related
properties relating to rot, I still think it's too porous. I'd honestly
worry a bit about the Cherry too but I suppose Walnut is OK.

FYI, the NSF, the folks that certify food handling products for
commercial usage, have never qualified any wooden cutting surface other
than Hard Maple.

BW

I've used purpleheart in some of the guitar necks I've built, using
yellow glue or Luthier's Mercantile's white Luthier's glue. No
problems--worked great. I don't think purpleheart is oily like cocobolo.

--Steve

Ron wrote:

> Finally have an oppurtunity to build some cutting boards this weekend...
>
> I'm planning on combining Hard Maple, Cherry, Walnut, Purpleheart and
> possibly some ROak and WOak. Have a piece of Padauk I may use as well.
>
> I was really surprised after a few internet searches to see all the various
> woods
> used for cutting board. DAGS for 'hardwood of your choice' cutting boards
>
> The real question: I intend to use Titebond II for these, but, will it work
> well with
> the very dense Purpleheart or should something like 'Gorilla Glue' be used.
>
> Finally, small gloat, the local Rocklers has S2S Purpleheart $4.00/bf all
> October.
>
> ThankX,
> Ron
>
>

SonomaProducts.com wrote:

> FYI, the NSF, the folks that certify food handling products for
> commercial usage, have never qualified any wooden cutting surface other
> than Hard Maple.

While this may be true, this doesn't mean it's the only safe species.
From some googling, there appears to be little difference in wood types:

"These authors found no differences between wood types (basswood, birch,
maple, maple plus walnut)."

http://foodsafety.ifas.ufl.edu/HTML/il114.htm


"The experiments described have been conducted with more than 10 species
of hardwoods...we found essentially no differences among the tested wood
species..."

http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/docliver/Research/cuttingboard.htm


"The scientists purposely contaminated seven species of wood cutting
boards and four types of plastic boards with Salmonella, Listeria, and
E. coli (all known to produce food poisoning)....They found that 99.9%
of the bacteria on the wood boards had died after three minutes..."

http://www.city-net.com/albertfp/cutboard.htm

Chris

Paul Kierstead wrote:
>
> The three quotes listed below all reference research work performed by
> D. O. Cliver, sometimes with others. As such, it is misleading to quote
> three different 'sources', since it is fundamentally a single one; a
> mono-culture if you will :)

Bah. That'll teach me to not check the references...

Chris

>I was really surprised after a few internet searches to see all the various
>woods
>used for cutting board. DAGS for 'hardwood of your choice' cutting boards
>
>The real question: I intend to use Titebond II for these, but, will it work
>well with
>the very dense Purpleheart or should something like 'Gorilla Glue' be used.
>
>Finally, small gloat, the local Rocklers has S2S Purpleheart $4.00/bf all
>October.
>

it goes fine with yellow glue. no oil at all. but hey it will dull
knives faster then other woods (G)
I get 8/4 S2S purpleheart for 3.50 a bf every time I buy it (G)
Knight-Toolworks
http://www.knight-toolworks.com
affordable handmade wooden planes

I made several purple heart, and Paduak cutting boards 4 or 5 years ago
using t2. They are still tight.
max

> Finally have an oppurtunity to build some cutting boards this weekend...
>
> I'm planning on combining Hard Maple, Cherry, Walnut, Purpleheart and
> possibly some ROak and WOak. Have a piece of Padauk I may use as well.
>
> I was really surprised after a few internet searches to see all the various
> woods
> used for cutting board. DAGS for 'hardwood of your choice' cutting boards
>
> The real question: I intend to use Titebond II for these, but, will it work
> well with
> the very dense Purpleheart or should something like 'Gorilla Glue' be used.
>
> Finally, small gloat, the local Rocklers has S2S Purpleheart $4.00/bf all
> October.
>
> ThankX,
> Ron
>
>

Chris Friesen wrote:
> Paul Kierstead wrote:
>>
>> The three quotes listed below all reference research work performed by
>> D. O. Cliver, sometimes with others. As such, it is misleading to
>> quote three different 'sources', since it is fundamentally a single
>> one; a mono-culture if you will :)
>
> Bah. That'll teach me to not check the references...
>
> Chris

LOL. Aww, I was just pickin' on ya. 99.998% of the lot here would just
assert that it was better, or that someone said it was better. At least
you tracked down some references.

Incidentally, as a result of all this, I started using a wood cutting
board for my meat, since I hated the plastic one (it slides around too
easy) which was trashed anyway.

The three quotes listed below all reference research work performed by
D. O. Cliver, sometimes with others. As such, it is misleading to quote
three different 'sources', since it is fundamentally a single one; a
mono-culture if you will :)

On the upside, he does have a paper entitled "Cutting boards and
bacteria--oak vs. Salmonella."

There is a literature review of the topic:
http://www.treteknisk.no/Tema/naeringsmiddel/publikasjoner/Report-1.pdf

Which is dry (heh) but pretty interesting. It is useful as it is a
survey of a wide variety of authors, hopefully evening out some of the
responses. Its conclusions are telling:
"...plastic was generally found to be cleaner than wood, unless fat
deposits occurred. However, used plastic surfaces were more difficult to
clean than used wooden surfaces, especially in the presence of fat
deposits. Plastic wears faster than wood, offering openings to foreign
contaminants."

There are if, ands and buts of course, so at the minimum you should read
the whole conclusion yourself. *My* short version of the conclusion: In
a home environment, with lots of drying time and adequate washing, wood
will out-perform plastic, but this is far from certain as the studies to
date have had serious flaws.


Chris Friesen wrote:

> "These authors found no differences between wood types (basswood, birch,
> maple, maple plus walnut)."
>
> http://foodsafety.ifas.ufl.edu/HTML/il114.htm
>
>
> "The experiments described have been conducted with more than 10 species
> of hardwoods...we found essentially no differences among the tested wood
> species..."
>
> http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/docliver/Research/cuttingboard.htm
> "The scientists purposely contaminated seven species of wood cutting
> boards and four types of plastic boards with Salmonella, Listeria, and
> E. coli (all known to produce food poisoning)....They found that 99.9%
> of the bacteria on the wood boards had died after three minutes..."
>
> http://www.city-net.com/albertfp/cutboard.htm
>
> Chris