Which Is The Best Wood For Butcher Blocks?

Our comprehensive product range and industry knowledge has increased over the years, together with our commitment to innovative product design. From working with traditional hardwoods to introducing colour coded, chopping boards to the market in 1976, customer need remains at the heart of what we do. Our selection of traditional butchers chopping blocks are ideal to use as tables or free standing kitchen islands. Whether you’re looking for bespoke butcher block tables or butcher block tops for an island, our extensive range will be sure to fit in with the décor and style of your own home. Fully refurbished, polished and ready for use, select the bespoke butchers block for you online with UKAA. Emmet’s Elixir is an all-natural, anti-microbial formulation of beeswax and food-safe mineral oil that is ideal for our unfinished and rubbed oil butcher block products.
This makes it an easy match for your current color scheme as it has both light and dark shades. Now offering over 100 sizes and 6 different kinds of woods in pre-sized butcher block tops. Great for contractors, DIY'ers, commercial butcher blocks or those looking to save big. For more details, click on the “PRE-SIZED BLOCKS” tab. As long as you’ve confirmed that the oil you’ve purchased to treat your butcher block is rated as a food-safe oil, the answer is yes.

And the duller the knife, the more force it requires to cut, increasing the risk that the blade will slip and slice where it shouldn’t. When ordering Antique Oak Lye, Driftwood Lye, or Softwood Lye, there is an additional handling fee, and they must be shipped either next day air or ground using FedEx. This is due to the hazardous material status of these products. When you choose your solid wood worktop, things like the length of worktop that will work best for you will be pretty much determined by your room. Finally, the best thickness to choose is almost certainly going to be driven by your budget. Really nice kitchen butcher block with granite worktop, two drawers and two shelves.
It is made of straight pieces of wood that are carefully glued together to create a particularly sturdy surface that with regular maintenance, will last for many years. Each piece has two soft-close doors with two understated silver pulls that conceal a spring action drawer that sits over each of the two storage areas. What pulls it all together beautifully is the reddish-colored finish that brings out and accents the grain of the wood.
These tables are available in round, square, and rectangle shapes and a variety of sizes. Make sure to keep your butcher block tables indoors to reduce warping or cracking. Just a quick ‘be careful’ I love these countertops and will be putting them in my home, but I made the mistake of putting them in an executive rental apt that I have.

The high heat will damage the conditioned surface, and can cause warping/cracking. Use an extra-fine grit sandpaper — you’ll want to sand away in gentle, small circles — just until the filled seam is level with the board. Lastly, rub in a good amount of board cream or mineral oil, and your board will be ready to go. Cherry offers a warm red tint that works really well as a contrast with white cabinets. It falls between Maple and Walnut when it comes to cost and is the softest of the four options making it slightly less durable with heavy use.
Instead of chopping into the grain, or against the grain, you are chopping with the same direction as the wood fibers. And no chipping of the wood fibers as commonly found with cheaper boards. The cheapest I could find a maple butcher block in this size was $300 and that was buying online, but there’s no guarantee we wouldn’t have had to send it back for defects, etc.

If you will be cleaving meat and using knives directly on the butcher block, the wood should be hard enough that it will withstand this use without becoming badly damaged. From butcher knives to meat band saws and everything in between; Butchers Equipment Warehouse is the one-stop shop for all your butchering needs. The mysterious natural antibiotic effect of wood on food contaminating bacteria seems to work with old wood as well as new, and with every species of wood tested so far.
Next, apply a beeswax finish to seal in moisture while simultaneously creating a water-repellant barrier on the surface. Avoid using vegetable or olive oils, as these can go rancid with time. Bally Block produces cutting boards that can be used in any commercial kitchen setting. Wipe it down again and then wipe with a dry cloth to remove all of the moisture. If needed, you can use butcher block conditioner or mineral oil to recondition the wood, once it is dry. You can certainly prepare dough on it for baking as long as there are no cracks or gaps in the countertop.
It features two towel bars, one on each side of the island, that can also be used with S-hooks to hang pots or utensils for easy access. A slatted lower shelf can house lesser-used appliances, a tray of your favorite spirits, a storage basket, and more. Here, Alyson, the do-it-yourselfer who pens the blog The Ragged Wren used the budget material to create countertops and a kitchen island topper. She says while poplar wood dings and dents a little easier because it is softer than butcher block, she doesn't mind because those little imperfections enhance her kitchen's rustic vibe.

Follow the above tips on installation, sealing, and cleaning your butcher block countertops, and the surface should last for 20 years or longer. As it does with water, wood swells or shrinks with changing temperatures. Homeowners can expect their butcher block countertops to expand by roughly ⅛- inch in summer and contract by the same amount in the winter. Now, if you don’t prepare for this fluctuation by leaving enough room along the perimeter, the wood’s expansion could cause it to warp or crack. A butcher block counter’s cutting surface in its natural state is food safe. On the other hand, it is not very waterproof and will absorb water, which may cause it to swell.
So if your project sounds like it fits in one of these categories, then it’s worth considering using a food safe wood finish. But regardless, I’m going to give you all the details. Below you’ll find the 9 best food safe wood finishes, but also the 2 basic categories that all wood projects fall into, which will determine which kind of finish to use. Plus, the nitty gritty “Reality” of food grade finishes and why you may not need to be so concerned.

Titebond III Ultimate Wood Glue and Titebond II Premium Wood Glue have both been approved for indirect food contact. For this reason, it is the glue that we recommend for making cutting boards. With butcher block oil, the adage “less is more” definitely applies. Whereas you might be tempted to buy the largest container of oil you can find, don’t. Butcher blocks don’t need to be treated frequently so buying large amounts may be pointless as it could spoil before you finish the bottle. These ingredients are known for their moisturizing properties and are combined with the mineral oil to create a food-safe treatment that is FDA compliant.