Testing out cutting and etching fabrics: denim and light cotton

That’s one of the things I noticed when I got the first set. It’s not like the logoed ones are anything special. :slightly_smiling_face:

My 99 cent only store has some bamboo (un-marked) boards for 1.99 in medium and large sizes (same price) can’t beat that! Still wondering how well you could use the engraved board for food - most posts mention having the user turn the board over for use ( always a plan), or if the sealing it with oil/wax would be enough. I would assume if a cheese board that would be fine - you could use the engraved side.

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I would assume that you would want to engrave only the back side. I love wood cutting boards but you have to be careful about any cavity that food can stay in. You can’t sanitize wood cutting boards well, so you have to take that into account.
If there were a sealant that would fill in the engraved area that you could add that would help, but it would defeat the purpose of using a natural wood cutting board.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the surface of cutting boards and how to approach this.

  1. A good wax/oil sealer will help.

  2. Achieve a good balance between depth of engrave and resolution to avoid too deep holes.

  3. Keep the engraving to black and white with few or no gradients and then you will have more flat surface rather than a large area that has been engraved.

  4. Use the engraved wood cutting board for fresh veggies only or hard cheeses, things that aren’t too wet like tomatoes. Something that I generally try to differentiate with my cutting boards. Generally moist things are left to HDPE boards.

  5. Use an HDPE board for meats.

  6. Keep a stiff brush for the cutting board and use immediately, rinse and brush and then allow to dry.

  7. Just keep one side un-engraved and only use that side.

I have some wooden cutting boards that are fairly marred from lots of use and this is how I treat them. There are many discussions about the sanitation of wooden boards.

Still thinking about the ramifications of this. I engraved the small cheese boards on both sides. It’s on the perimeter and they aren’t real deep so for serving cheese, they will work. I advised to use a good stiff brush for cleaning.

Msgr. Mak

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You can’t sanitize wood at all (but that’s why we all have immune systems). The fact that you can’t see little divots doesn’t mean they aren’t there at the size bacteria need even on the smoothest board (bacteria are measured in microns and wood has grain). Wood (particularly hard woods) actually have some inherent antibacterial properties, but mostly soap and water clean it. Think about every knife cut against the board leaves billions of embedded bacteria in each cut.

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They Dollar Store ones I’ve seen here tend to be thin (3/8") but would be okay for cheese I expect.

To wax it I use a mixture of mineral oil (you can get it at the supermarket or drugstore) and beeswax (20% by volume). Warm it in a pan or in the microwave being careful not to make it hot to the touch. You can also add some carnauba wax (4 parts mineral oil 1 part each of the waxes). The warm oil/wax mixture will soak in and the wax provides a more durable surface than the oil alone. They’re all foodsafe.

You could even make up a small jar of the mix to go with the board.

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So my take from this it that light engraves wouldn’t make anything worse, bacteriologically speaking?

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Seems like I saw a study somewhere that showed that beat-up old wooden cutting boards are actually more sanitary than for instance plastic ones. Something about all the surface area giving more sites for oxidation of the bad stuff, or something.

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Harold Mcgee On Food and Cooking:

http://www.npr.org/2010/10/21/130697865/harold-mcgees-keys-to-good-cooking-for-chefs

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Aha!

And there’s this: http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/wellbeing/cutting-boards-and-bacteria

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A very small excerpt: “wood cutting boards, you should use a quaternary ammonium sanitizer” i.e. something like Mr. Clean.

The next key factor is allowing time for the wood to thoroughly dry. I suppose a cycle in a UV sanitizer wouldn’t hurt either. :smiley:

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quaternary ammonium compounds aren’t awesome to eat. We use them in the hospital all the time, and the warnings on the wipes are pretty strong about getting the stuff off before eating, and avoiding contact with the body.

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If you trust the Government. USDA cutting board Food Safety

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Very true, but, they can be sanitized. Having them properly dried and aired after conventional cleaning is still the preferred method.

In the sense of better cleaned, not sterile in any way. They still will have plenty of bacteria. My favorite exercise to do with med students is we plate put their hands, and the do a full OR grade surgical scrub, then we re-plate their hands. Of course it kills many of the bacteria, and does reduce surface types staph and strep, but the deep bacteria (like staph epi) do just fine despite being bathed in either betadine scrub or chlorohexadine scrub.

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Well, yes, most people probably don’t have access to an autoclave at home. The study recommended the use of the ammonia as opposed to chlorine which can actually inhibit the natural antibiotic properties of wood. I’ll take “better” over not at all., but you win. :smile:

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Haha, I even have access to ethylene oxide sterilization equipment. Wouldn’t try that on wood since it’s porous and might outgas slowly (and that stuff is terrifying). Would be great for acrylic things.

Autoclaving would probably warp a wood board. I do autoclave 3D printed nylon parts though without problems.

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Teaching young children, I took things like hand washing and covering sneezes seriously because we know how that can protect the classroom’s population from getting sick. On balance, though, we also discussed some of the research showing that some regular exposure to things helps your immune system get in some “practice” early in life. The article below calls it an “education.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/educate-your-immune-system.html?_r=0

Exert:

These findings are very preliminary, but they support a decades-old (and unfortunately named) idea called the hygiene hypothesis. In order to develop properly, the hypothesis holds — to avoid the hyper-reactive tendencies that underlie autoimmune and allergic disease — the immune system needs a certain type of stimulation early in life. It needs an education.

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Yeah, there are numerous papers and studies that have looked at kids who grew up on farms, exposed to farm animals, hay, soil, manure, etc all having lower incidence of asthma, allergies and autoimmune reactions. The frequent exposure is thought to train the immune systems, particularly the anti-parasite part, to react appropriately rather than be unbounded. Not saying that hand washing isn’t a great idea, just that a little dirt in your life is a good thing.

Now getting back to the original issue, there are some bacteria that are just bad, and not only are they bad, but also require few organisms to cause disease. For instance enteroinvasive E. Coli requires millions of bacteria to cause disease on ingestion, while Shigella requires only a few (there have been lab experiments where a single one did). So did you put raw egg (salmonella), raw meat on the board (pretty much everything, particularly ground)? Well that’s a whole level of clean you need vs. you cut cooked meat or canned tuna on it…

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I spent several years doing research on anaerobic digestion of domestic and industrial wastes, a large portion of which involved hands-on (literally) working with sewage sludge. I was rarely sick in those days and I always wondered if that work helped my immune system.

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