I have a large cherry burl that I am making into bowls. The wood is not spalted, but there are thousands of hairline cracks in it. Normally for cracks like this I would wick some ca into it to strengthen and fill it. In this case, there are so many I can’t ignore to potential for food contamination. While I’m intending for these bowls to be decorative, there is always the possibility someone could put salad into one. Is there a food safe alternative to ca? If not, should I mark as not food safe? Or am I just overthinking this?
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Food safe wood stabilizer?
- Thread starter Mike Novak
- Start date
I thought epoxy was fine once fully cured, but I may easily be mistaken. I've used it on the inside of goblets before.
I believe ca to be the least toxic of the available options, if there is any toxicity at all.
If there are 'thousands of cracks' I would hope that they are just on the ends of the log blanks. If the log sections are long, then no problem, just cut off an inch or 2 and the cracks are gone. With a burl, I am not sure. I generally don't use burl for daily use bowls because of all the cracks. The colored epoxy resins are supposed to be safe after curing. You need a vacuum chamber to make it work, and maybe an inside and outside form so you don't use as much resin. Never done that one before.
robo hippy
robo hippy
Stabilizer is usually not a crack filler. You need some body in the material to fill the gap. No such thing as food safe of either, but how would you think that someone would ingest the crack filler? You'll probably have to heat the wood to get better penetration of any kind of resin. It has to displace the air that will be trapped at the bottoms of the cracks.