Hi there!
I have installed a large butcher block 1″ thick maple cutting board in my concrete
counter top. The board sits in a recess in the counter about 5/8″ deep and has a radius’d
edge of 3/8″ above the top. The board is 19″x25″ O.A.
I have used this type of installation many times, very successfully. This time the board warped and twisted. I’m trying to straighten it out in the sun, don’t remember which way to face it to the sun the concave or the convex. Used that method with hollow core doors in the past. Any suggestions?
One option is to by good quality butcher block; American maple instead of the Ukrainian maple from IKEA that I got… It was cheap.
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Replies
Soak it in hot water for as long as it takes to become saturated (say a day or two), then put it on a flat rack to dry, weighted down with enough concrete blocks to squash it flat again or at least get it well started in that direction. (If you got it well enough soaked, it will flatten more from the weight during the time it takes to dry.)
Make sure the blocks are sitting on a few strips of ¾x¾ to keep the blocks up off the board surface so air can get to it, and make sure the drying rack allows plenty of air to circulate under the board, too.
Wait a month.
Sand and re-finish it with fresh olive oil, and you're done.
(BTW, this isn't really the proper folder on the forum to ask this type of question. This would go in General Discussion. The Fest folder is more or less where people look to find threads about our annual get togethers.)
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not brought
low by this? For thine evil pales before that which
foolish men call Justice....
Sorry, but that's the second best way i know of to kill a cutting board, by saturating it with water. An expedited method of your advice is to kill them in the dishwasher, using the drying cycle. First fastest way of all is to microwave a board, to boil the water inside the cells.I've built thousands of cutting boards of 50 or so varieties of woods, all of which had a lifetime warranty. I've taken back 10-15 boards in 20+ years. The waterlogged ones left sitting overnight in the kitchen sink are obvious because of the cracking on the ends which will dry faster than the center. The dishwashered ones turn gray from chemicals in the water, and the micro'd ones oftimes split on the seams - it affects the glue somehow - and twist like crazy.Maples, even sugar maple, are not terribly stable to start with, but it makes a non-toxic, hard surface if properly used. (I have no idea what IKEA's countertop material truly is.) I don't cosider a well on a countertop to be that, however. I put rubber feet on my larger boards to facilitate air circulation to prevent warpage. I would not guarantee a board if the owners removed the feet.
I can't argue with your basic premise; but soaking the board for a good long time is the simplest way to get some lubrication back into the structure of the wood so it can be re-shaped under pressure. Doing this only once shouldn't, in my opinion, ruin the wood; it's a pretty resilient material. (Obviously you're right that daily dishwashering or soaking will destroy it.)
Possibly soaking it for a coupla months in very warm but not-too-hot olive oil would be better for the wood in the long run, but I wouldn't want to do that except in a very well ventilated out-building. And the board would weep oil every time it got hot for the rest of its natural life....
Another thought occurs to me: when boat-builders bend timbers, they usually use a steam box to heat them up so they can be bent. But it's the heat that does the trick, not the steam itself. If you want to bend a piece of wood and you don't care about charring the surface (because you'll be paring it down to final shape after it's bent), you can simply rotisserie it over an open fire. When it gets hot enough, it will bend.
Maybe the OP could steam the board and over-bend it a tad so when the pressure is released it'll return back to flat.
Or, he could just get some CVG stock and build a new one....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
Lubricating the structure of wood?? You're way, way too New-Agey for me, Dino! <G>The reason the steam-bending analogy isn't applicable is that one steambends a thin piece compared to a cutting board, and the ends are normally trimmed after bending. The differential in drying between the ends and the interior causes cracking in a thick board, the same reason we paint freshly milled cants with parafin on their ends. The other thing is the 'waterproof' glue line. It's still a weak link in all that steaming, swelling, and shrinking. Iuse poly glues on my boards, but i had one returned in four pieces. I had not a clue from the look of it what had happened, so sent him a check saying i couldn't guarantee a replacement board would stand up any better. He sent me half of that amount back saying he'd taken chickens straight off his rotiserrie and placed them on the board, for the steam room experience non pareil, and that he felt partly responsible for it breaking. Duh... Then there's the captured side of the board. I'm presently repairing some refrigerator panels from a camper trailer that buckled, then cracked along the glue line because they got too moist. The other panels in the kitchen cabs weathered the storm, so to speak, without cracking, bec both sides were able to dry equally.I did a 2' x 3' cutting board to be dropped into a countertop on a lip, exposed to air underneath. Even so, it warps a bit after a lot of moisture is applied to its surface. The fellow is a chef, not fussed by the slight bit of warpage since he got his big, honking cutting board he wanted and it flattens in-between heavy uses.
I've seen bends made on steam heated peices as large as 8x8.
Granted, they gotta cook for a loooonnng time.
You need to visit a maritime museum sometime, and go down into the 'tween decks of a traditional wooden sailing ship to see the knees. On ships of the line (74-gun warships), the knees were sometimes 20"x20", solid oak, steam bent.
Sometime in the 1800s, a shipbuilder in England had the idea of planting his own oak tree 'orchard' to supply him with good quality timber for his yard. By that time, the demands of England's navy and merchant shipping had made good oak a rare and expensive commodity. But what was interesting was that he had his gardeners pre-bend the saplings into shapes he knew he would need to fashion ribs, knees, and all the rest.
The plan would have worked, too, except for the fact that by the time the trees were mature enough to harvest, full-sized wooden ships were no longer being built as iron had started to take over. Imagine, though, the amount of calm self-confidence needed for a man to plant trees he knew only his grandchildren would be able to use.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
I toured Nelson's HMS Victory in Portsmouth last year. Yeah, pretty amazing workmanship. The guide, a proper British officer, said that what most of the sailors died of were splinters from blasted ship partz, not the actual cannon shot. It was one of the most thorough and fascinating tours i've ever done. (After surgery, they gave you rum if they thought you would live. If not...you got to watch your mates drink theirs.) There was also a Royal Navy ship called the Mary Rose that was hauled up not too long ago, sunk during Henry VIII's reign right in the harbor - embarrassing. Half of her was hauled up, anyway...the part that was buried in the mud and didn't deteriorate. She was being sprayed with PEG to stabilize her; they'll do this for years, but there's viewing platform and interpretive walk. The artifacts they found were incredibly well preserved, including long bows and even their comically (now) small shoes.
I know of the Rose, but have never seen her. There is, I believe, a replica of her sailing as a training ship. She was in NY harbour in 1976 for the Bicentennial Tall Ships parade.
There is another recovered ship in Sweden, the Wasa, which I saw in the mid '80-s under similar circumstances: being impregnated with preservatives and housed in a protective building/tent. I've got a couple of hundred 35mm Kodachromes I took of her, but I've got no way to transfer the slides to digital so I can't post any.
Forrestor in the Hornblower books talked about the splinters, too. Scary. Think about the size of splinters a 32-lb chunk of iron could throw up after having been fired over a mile from a shore battery....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
Different ships; the "Rose" was built over 200 years after the "Mary Rose". That's what's so extraordinary about the latter: built 500 years ago, but so much of the stuff that went down was so well preserved in the mud.
Aha, you are correct. I missed a 'Mary' in there, LOL....
View Image View Image
Above is the Mary Rose (artist's conception).
View Image View Image
And this is HMS Rose (at dock and actually sailing).
Yes, truly amazing how much can survive for how long in the absense of oxygen. And frightening how fast the stuff starts to disintegrate once it's raised unless those extraordinary measures are taken.
Here is an image off the web of the Swedish ship Wasa I mentioned in the earlier post.
View Image
I visited her in the early '80s, when she had only relatively recently been raised. From this photo, I see that they've added some rigging which wasn't there when I saw her. The image caption describes the ship as 'semi-stabilised' at the current time.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
Edited 6/7/2007 3:14 pm ET by Dinosaur
I brought up a "Wasa" site and found both she and the MR drowned from similar causes: the guns had been fired and events combined to make the ships roll while the ports were still open so that water poured into them. What a fantastic ship, and i do mean fantasy...all that carving!
Oh, yeah! The carving on the sterncastle of the Wasa blew my socks off...especially standing there twenty feet away and down about where the waterline would have been, looking up at it. I wish I had a way to scan those slides into this 'puter for you....
There are more similarities between the MR and the Wasa than we suspected:
From a Wasa website:
You'd think the Swedes'd have learned from the experience of the Brits, eh?
Note: That greenish-yellow tint in the photo above is caused by the way film reacts to the special lighting inside the preservation building. To the naked eye, there is a faint greenish tinge to everything in there, but it's not as noticeable as in photographs.
When I shot my slides in the 1980s, I was carrying both Kodachrome 64(known for its red-popping characteristics and used a lot for advertising shoots) and Ektachrome 27 (a film which boosts greens & blues; excellent for landscapes for that reason). I walked in with a partially shot roll of Kodachrome, finished it off, then switched to the Ektachrome and used a tripod (it's a slower film, which means it's also less grainy so you get sharper images. I needed the tripod because I don't shoot with a flash so I was shooting at speeds as slow as .25 sec). When I got the slides developed, I thought it was the Ektachrome which had caused the greenish tint on everything...until I noticed essentially the same colouration, slightly less pronounced, in the few slides I'd shot with the Kodachrome.
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
You found the same website i did. I also noted the odd color inside the building where the "Mary Rose" was being sprayed. I just thought the Brits were too cheap to spring for actual lighting once they had my entry fee. Ian's brother went into the Royal Navy as Boy Sailor, i think age 15 or so. Pretty young, eh? He retired in Portsmouth where the "Victory" and "Mary Rose" are located, so in addition to our excellent official tour guides we got the enlisted man's version as well. He has enough Pusser's Rum in his liquor cabinet at home to float the Mary Rose and bitterly recalls the end of rum portions as part of the minimum daily requirement of a sailor's diet. He's pretty well preserved, too, come to think...
dinosaur,
Knees are always sawn, maybe from trees that had been bent into shape while growing, but usually, with oak, from the crooks where branches meet the trunk. With some other species, like hackmatack (tamarack), the best knees come from the root angles.
Frames are mostly sawn as well, and then doubled, staggering the butt joints. Bent frames are usually found in smaller boats. I believe bent frames would be rarely found in any boat more than 60 - 70' or so long or more than 150 or so tons displacement.
Ron
I'll gladly defer to a guy from the maritimes on this subject. My knowledge is far from exhaustive and I was babbling from memory. Now that you mention it, I remember that I did know that crooks were used for the knees. CRAFTS strikes again, Duh....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
You set it in the sun with the convex to the sun, and the concave to the ground.
You might want to do something about draining the recess this thing sits in.
Luka and Dinosaur,
thanks for the suggestions.
I will try the 'sun' first, if I can get it straight, that will work for me. Eventually I will replace the board.
The soaking will be difficult because I have soaked the board originally in mineral oil and I re-seal it fairly regularly. When left in the sun it 'sweats' oil like crazy!
Sorry about the post in the 'Fest' category, it was a wrong click, and it was gone...
Thank you for your help,
Jacek
I've never heard of the "sun" doing much - I always thought the key to that trick wasn't so-much the sun as the grass. You put the plank on the grass in the sun, and the board sucks the moisture from the ground/grass in the warm sun.I made up a 3" think end grain cutting board a while back maybe 12x18, and oiled the heck out of it, every day for a week, etc. I must have missed something somplace, because the first time we pulled it out to carve up a roast, the thing bowed and split a seam in minutes.
After waiting a few weeks, it's 99% back to flat. I'm looking for a solution too.One thought I had was that perhaps straight mineral oil isn't enough to repel moisture.
Maybe oil/beeswax?If it hadn't actually absorbed any water, it wouldn't have warped. - woa I must be feling chatty tonight - that's a long post!
Jason,
I have made these boards many times before and never had this problem. This is a 'signature' of many of my home designs - a built in cutting board. This is the first that bowed.
I still suspect that it is the wood species, not the moisture. Or perhaps my fault at gluing it together out of two smaller pieces. I have oiled it on both sides very well and have actually maintained a wet - oil, base in the recess in the concrete countertop to prevent it from sucking in any moisture. I have another board on the kitchen island and that one stayed flat
as it was originally.
As for the sun working on a piece of wood, I have seen door guys straghten HC doors that way at building sites. IT does have to do with drying one side and moving moisture from one side to another. MY butcher block is 'sweating' oil in the sun like crazy, even though it looks dry inside. I was able to straighten it out some, but not tottaly.
Oiling won't do anything for your board except make it look pretty. It is not a sealant by any means
It's not meant to be a sealant.
The intent is to fill up (saturate) the wood fibers with oil preventing
further absorption of moisture to throw the board 'off balance'.
Well, your definition is what i would call "sealing", but i'm not going to argue semantics. The fact is that oil, esp a non-drying oil like mineral oil, will not do this against water, as you've discovered. The only substance i know of that will do what you suggest is polyethelene glycol, or PEG, but it happens to cause renal failure.
But splintie--PEG is also in that yummie Chinese toothpaste. It MUST be good for you.
;)
Here is another good use for PEG (warning - fascinating link)
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/0002.Borgens.PEG.html
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=17326
Interesting outcome with Peg, but i guess i wouldn't want to be one of the guinea pigs who got their spines crushed. :^(What were the steamed 8x8s used for?
>>What were the steamed 8x8s used for?
shipbuilding - here's one that's "only" 3-4" or so.
I found this pic on this site:
http://blogs.csmonitor.com/in_focus/lifestyle/index.html
View Image
Thanks for giving the link, as well. I just spent 20 minutes browsing that blog's photos and reading.
I'm the queen of warp! Put it on the grass with the cupped (concave) side down, on a nice sunny day. Depending on how bad the warp is, you might have to leave it , or actually, repeat it, more than one day, but take it indide before the dew comes out, assuming you don't live in arid country.
What you are trying to do is equalize the moisture throughout the piece.
With tabletops, etc. one usually seals both sides when equality is reached. With BB, I guess you would do that by treating both sides with mineral oil or another BB sealer.
Good luck!
Kate,
that's exactly what I have done. The warp is almost gone, all I need to do is fine tune it.
Now that we are getting some sunny clear days in Northern California, I should be able to get it right by the end of next weekend. Thanks for the words of encouragement!