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treen plate questions

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old ugly

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I have been searching mr. google but then thought you folks have more info than him.
I have a nice pc of oak,12x12x1to make it from. it will serve me for my camp as a cutting board and eating plate thinking flat on one side,for cutting, and slightly dished on the other, but unsure. hoping to be dated to late 1700s.
should I make my new plate square or round?
what should the dimensions be?
thanks
ou
tom
 
So far. With spoon gouge
 

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Looks way to concentric for hand made. For 17th century it likely would have been dished out with a hand held gouge. My grandparents had a set of dishes brought over from Germany by my Great Grandparents and no 2 of them were identical, and obviously hand carved. I like the idea of the project! And that is a beautifully grained piece of wood. What do you plan on sealing it with? Two of them they had had dried out too much and had cracked.
 
I used my spoon gouge to hollow it out by hand.
I think from what I’ve seen on the net plates were mostly round by my time frame. So I will probably make it round.
I’m researching food safe ways to seal it. I will let you know what I find out
 
Oak is very porous for such a use. Make sure those pores are clogged with a good thick finish before use. A close grain hard wood like maple, cherry etc, would be so much preferable. For something that porous, I would carefully in a double boiler, mix USP grade mineral oil (from a drug store) and beeswax 50-50 (beeswax melts about 145 degrees and it discolors over 185 degrees, so don't get it too hot) Then warm the bowl slightly (perhaps 100 degrees) and apply the paste to it several times buffing the excess off between applications. Walnut oil is good stuff for tight grained woods. Salad bowl oil is nothing but mineral oil in most cases. I have never scene a square plate in any museum or period display. In fact, many families on the frontier used a trencher (a hand carved oblong bowl) as a communal bowl and had no individual dishes. Folks in the settlements would have fired clay dishware.

I do a fair amount of wood turning and turners were generally confined to towns and settlements. Horn turners, bone turners, button makers and of course wood turners. Some did all types. Then there was, in a few cities, sheet metal spinners. A type of turning to form copper, pewter or silver items over a wooden mandrel.

Some folks use BLO. Be careful of what you use, because some BLO has toxic drying agents and preservatives added.

This site may be helpful: https://www.cuttingboard.com/blog/what-type-of-oils-are-safe-to-use-on-your-cutting-board/
 
Oak is very porous for such a use. Make sure those pores are clogged with a good thick finish before use. A close grain hard wood like maple, cherry etc, would be so much preferable
Well I knew red oak was very porous, but I didn't know white was..., so I learned something very valuable.:thumb: I'll stick to poplar or cherry for spoons.

LD
 
Well I knew red oak was very porous, but I didn't know white was...
One time I was varnishing some wooden items, a few different types of wood, in a building with a skylight. I did the white oak first, while the table was in the shade. By the time I got to the other end of the table the sun had moved over the skylight. When I went back to look at the pieces, the white oak had little bubbles over all of the pores, from the air inside heating up and expanding.
 
Well I knew red oak was very porous, but I didn't know white was..., so I learned something very valuable.:thumb: I'll stick to poplar or cherry for spoons.

LD
not all red oaks are as porous as some and of the white oaks a few have smaller pores than others. Just in North America there are five or six varieties of oaks (three in addition to red and white and there are about 30 different white oaks and around fifty different red oaks and to make matters even more confusing, there are also naturally occurring hybrids between varieties in each group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Quercus_species It may simply be that the pores are more difficult to see in the white oaks than in the red oaks. For spoons, I would stick to black cherry, any fruit wood, maple, even walnut. yellow Poplar (not a true poplar) is ok, but is so soft, it scratches easily leaving it subject to absorbing food residue.
 
I don’t know how to link to a web page, so I’ll give you a name to look up.
Culinarylore. Com then ‘origin of ‘Square Meal’
It shows a couple of square trenchers from eighteenth century.
I don’t know that such was used on land, but if used on ships you would no doubt see it in seaside inns, and the homes of seaman. From there how far inland would you see it? Don’t know
 
With the help of a dictionary I can sort-a read Latin, and if you give me about a week I can get through a Spanish newspaper, but have no idea what that means.
 
Traditionally, a lot of wooden kitchenware was carved from birch, especially in northern areas. Poplar was also used.

I like your idea of one side as a cutting board and the other as a plate. It seems practical especially when camping. Not everything can be eaten from a cup.

Jeff
 
here it is,what I call finished, as round as I could get it by hand and no lathe. I figured that round was probably the best way to go.

i never even thought of oak being unsafe for making a plate, I see so many cutting boards made from oak, who would have guessed ..
im putting the sealing finish on it now.

so if I die from eating off it I will let you know.

ou
tom
 

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