I made a tofu press and have some Howard butcher block conditioner on hand. Is that enough for a finish or do I need something more?
If this press is for vegan consumers, make sure there’s nothing in that conditioner that conflicts with a vegan diet.
The press looks great, I recently stumbled on some YT videos that showed how to build wooden knobs; I think they’d look great on this press.
Yes it’ll work. The “conditioner” is just a mix of food-grade mineral oil and beeswax. You’ll probably want to apply several coats, per the instructions on the bottle. Just note, that stuff isn’t a permanent finish, so you’ll need to reapply it periodically. Washing with hot water will make you need to reapply it ore frequently, due to it taking the wax out of the finish. You may want to get just mineral oil and finish with that, first, as the wood you used is fairly porous, and you want to have the wood soak up as much of that oil as possible.
Source: I use that stuff on my own cutting boards.
I have a related question!
I bought some wood kitchen stuff from an amateur home gamer with a small stand at a fair. The finish is non-existent and it needs more sanding with finer grit… but my issue now is that I don’t know how to deeply saturate it with food-safe oils. I slather the stuff on, but it doesn’t seem to absorb. I’m more used to using product like orange oil, which woods seem to take well, but that’s not food-safe.
Do I need some sort of vacuum chamber to extract the air in the wood fibers and cause the oil to deeply penetrate? Or is there a particular oil that is good about absorbing into wood? I’ve been using a beeswax/mineral combo which has been fine for cutting boards, but it’s not doing the job for the woods in these utensils.
Only sand up to about 200 grit. Any finer and the wood pores get clogged and will make it harder to absorb finish.
Good to know. They may be that fine already; they feel rough, but that could be because there really is no finish at all; they’re just dry wood.
Yeah not sure about for curved surfaces, but planing flat surfaces will make it feel super smooth and ready to take a finish. Note that it can also be wood dependent.
If you want it smoother, scrape it rather than sand it.
They’re utensils, and wood; I feel as if they’d last longer and wear better if I could get oil into them.
I have a set of wooden training gear from a martial art I studied years ago, before it broke me. It’s good wood, to start with, but for several years every few days I’d oil them down with orange oil, and it’d just… absorb into the wood. Now, even years later, they’re like handling a nice, smooth, almost metal-heavy material. I’d like to try to get my kitchen utensils like that, but I can’t find a food safe product that the wood takes as well as orange oil. TBF, I haven’t tried pure mineral oil…
That’s why I asked: is it the oil I’m using, or do I need to immerse in a vacuum chamber, or what? How do I get the wood to absorb the oil? I’m happy to keep re-applying every few days, if only the wood would take the oil and it would just sit in the surface indefinitely.
I finish my cutting boards first with pure mineral oil, I buy the stuff from the pharmacy aisle of the grocery store they sell as a laxative. I sand to 220 grit, wipe with a wet (with water) rag to raise the grain, sand it again at 220 grit, and then flood the surface with oil and massage it in. I often feel it soaking in under my fingers. I let it sit for about an hour, then flood again any dry spots.
Then I’ll rub it with “board butter” aka food safe paste wax aka mixture of mineral oil and beeswax. Rub it in, let it dry for a few minutes, buff it off. Let that sit for a few hours and the board is ready to use. As you wash the cutting board, this finish will wear off, and every now and again you have to reapply the wax.
I’ll give this a try, thanks. I think the maker skipped these steps.
I would think butcher block oil (mineral oil) would do
Dont buy “butcher block oil”, though, because it’s weirdly upcharged for just plain mineral oil. The pharmacy sells food grade mineral oil for way cheaper as a laxative, but it’s literally the same.
Also: freeze your tofu, and thaw it, it drains better
Changes the texture too
Yeah, and roll the cubes in cornstarch before frying, they get a nice crispy shell
I don’t know what that butcher block conditioner is. If it’s meant for butcher block counter tops, I would make sure it’s food safe.
Food grade mineral oil is a common choice for cutting boards. Since you’re working with food, I would make sure that whatever finish you use is specifically food grade.
Pure Tung oil.
If you can stand the smell of it. I just use cooking grade flax seed oil because I like the smell better
That should be fine, just might need to reapply over time as it wears off. They actually say that no finish may be best for things like cutting boards, so could even get away with just leaving it as is.
I’ve also used Tried & True which is a blend of beeswax and linseed oil.
In my experience, products labeled “linseed oil” commonly have oil drying agents that you really don’t want to be consuming. Tried & True specifically claims to be food safe, but not all linseed oils are. “Boiled linseed oil” is never food safe. “raw linseed oil” may or may not be.
“Flax seed oil” and “linseed oil” are the same thing, but flax seed oil is edible, and will not contain drying agents. If you’re making your own finish, you might want to look for “flax seed” instead, or at least ensure the “linseed” oil is food safe.
One final note: If you’re working with linseed oil, take special precautions with your rags. They can spontaneously combust. We had a mysterious fire overnight in a trash can in my shop that we couldn’t immediately explain. A few days later, a discarded rag sitting on a workbench started putting out copious amounts of smoke while we were working on the other side of the shop, and we finally understood the trash can fire.
Nice work. Unsure about the conditioner but if it’s good for a cutting board it should be ok.
I’ve been putting off making one of these because I want to come up with a single gear handle mechanism that drives the separate screws.
Nice Idea! In going to steal it and make one myself too!
I never understand why people would rather use a petroleum based oil for foodstuff finishes instead of edible plant based oils.
Plant-based oils can go rancid. Go get a block of wood, coat it in olive oil, and then leave it on your kitchen counter for three months, then tell me if you’d like to eat off it.
I’ve never seen a tofu press, but it looks like it has the worst DPI resolution of any printing device in existence.
