Handmade Tools for the Kitchen and the Camp
To Know
Care and Feeding
Wood will become "worn" looking after continued usage but it's easy to renew the surface with a fine abrasive like 0000 steel wool or plastic grey abrasive pads. After a 2 minute sanding apply butcher block oil or our favorite, walnut oil which is available on Amazon. Please don't leave wooden objects in water in the sink our use them in a microwave.
For our knives we generally use stainless steel which needs little maintenance. Carbon steel is excellent and we appreciate the good characteristics it offers but 9 our of 10 prefer stainless, just because of the maintenance.
Stabilized wood
There's a high-tech procedure to infuse wood with a thin epoxy in a vacuum chamber. When treated in this way the porous material is fully penetrated with the liquid epoxy and acts more like plastic, however the look and feel is unchanged. During the process colors can be added and I sometimes do this for handles in our knife work.
Laser Etch
We recently got into etching patterns into our wooden items with a small laser engraver. These burn a permanent pattern into the knife handles or on our wooden utensils.
Philosophy
If you cook you may have a favorite spoon, bowl, or knife. I do, and there’s something special about using the “tools for the kitchen or the camp” that I make. Sure, you can get a $12 plastic, imported bowl that will WORK, but why not a real show stopper that has character and weight, and actually gives a degree of pleasure when it’s used? Kitchen knives, wooden bowls, pocket knives, cutting boards, wooden spoons: these pieces all have a little of the “Art World” put in there before finding their way to the end user as gorgeous, useful objects. So why not be beautiful?