Design Challenge: Chopsticks

Why would the coloring fading (assuming it is just the wood’s natural color and not a stain) cause health problems? We spend lots of money consuming the wood dyes (bourbon, scotch, etc)…

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No, yeah, it was a coloring or stain that was being removed through use. If I knew then what I knew now I wouldn’t have bought them and used them like that.

So I get a dense hardwood, and fashion it to the shape, is there some type of food safe sealant to apply so that hot water wont bend them, and food oils and sauces won’t discolor?

I’ve used beeswax before to seal a project. It’s marketed as food-safe for salad bowls. I’m not sure how well it will hold up on something like chopsticks though.

http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=20087&cat=1,190,42950

You may have to re-apply it periodically.

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I have lots of hickory bolts drying as firewood. I could use a froe and split them into nice sheets and plane them. Hickory, ash and maple does for baseball bats, so these hardwoods should do well. I’d welcome any comments from those who have actually made chopsticks from American hardwoods.

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Never have used it, but I’ve heard that there’s a food safe sealant that can be used on things like butcher blocks, cutting surfaces, etc. I have a kitchen cart with a wooden top and I’ve been wanting to sand it down and reseal it…and I was told there is a product out there for such things.

Most of the food-safe finishes aren’t terribly durable. The classics are soft oils like mineral oil and shellac, which is bug poop mixed with booze. That may sound bad but don’t worry, Hershey’s uses it on Milk Duds.

Most of the scary-sounding finishes are food safe when completely cured, though. I would look at lacquers for the strength and hardness you want. But my wood finishing knowledge is pretty rusty, so please do your own research to confirm or disprove.

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Yes @dan lacquer would be the best choice, the Japanese have been using it just about forever, and it is easily renewable when it does start to degrade. Most people are scared of it though because of the solvent content, and because it can be a bear to get a good looking finish sometimes. Here’s a short, but informative, article from Lee Valley Tools Finishes for Items Used for Food.

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Now you know why they are called that… lol

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I don’t know what I didn’t see this topic before. There is a product called General Finishes Salad Bowl Finish that is actually more durable than Lacquer or Shellac. I’ve used it on end grain cutting boards that I’ve made and the claim is to only need to be redone when the surface needs to be re-finished (cuts in the wood needing to be sanded down again). Hope this isn’t too late!

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IME the completely round smooth ones are not as easy to use as the ones that still have some surface roughness and a little bit of rectangular shape left. (Most of my experience these days is with the semi-disposables, which look like they were just run through a custom router setup, although at home a fluting bit applied several times might do it.) It might be cool to build a jig so that the laser could apply light texture after the rest of the production process.

Here is a chopstick making jig.

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It might be worth stabilizing the wood before or after with some form of resin. Cactus Juice jumps out as a first attempt. Though I must say that I don’t know the food-safe of it, think I read somewhere that it was okay. But due-diligence would be needed.

Here is a nice chopstick design along with some of the chips.

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Beautiful! What types of wood did you use?

All those chips just for a chopstick reminds me of this video (but seriously nice job):

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Walnut, maple, mahogany for the spline

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Thanks. I’m tickled that the mahogany was the only one that I could not guess (I have no woodworking experience, but would like to explore it once my supperhappy machine arrives).

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this is way cool. how long does a pair take you start to finish? do you make a whole mess of 'em at a time?

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You make the blanks in batch mode, cutting the spline and glue up is done in 3 to 4" wide blanks. then cut and sanded into 7mm squares. That takes about 2 hours for 10 sets.
Shaping the chopstick takes about 10 minutes a set using the chopstickmaster jig I linked to above. Alternatively you could use a flat belt sander but I could not get a good result that way.
Nice thing about chopsticks are that you can use up nice wood scraps that might get thrown away or get tossed into the burn pile.

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You did a beautiful job on those. How did you cut the slot for the spine? :relaxed: