wooden or plastic cutting boards which are safer? the facts

The quick answer is most woods are food safe and for cutting boards most used wooden boards in real world situations are more hygienic than most used plastic cutting boards. This may be surprising for some so lets run through the background in a bit more detail and I'll also point you to all the regulations and science I know of on the subject so you can reach your own conclusions.

There is much conflicting info on the web, beware and read carefully, little is backed by scientific research.

First let's look back to the early 1990's when Professor Dean Cliver Professor of Food Safety at the University of California began research comparing plastic and wooden cutting boards after the U.S. Department of Agriculture told him they had no scientific evidence to support their recommendation that plastic, rather than wooden cutting boards be used in home kitchens. Interestingly though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Food Code (recommended regulations for restaurants) permitted use of cutting boards made of maple or similar close-grained hardwood.

Anyway Professor Cliver and his team took wooden and plastic boards, smeared them with bacteria, cleaned them by washing with detergent then tested them to see how many bacteria they could recover from the surface. 

"disease bacteria ... were not recoverable from wooden surfaces in a short time after they were applied, unless very large numbers were used. Wooden boards that had been used and had many knife cuts acted almost the same as new wood, whereas plastic surfaces that were knife-scarred were impossible to clean and disinfect manually ..." read the report here

Interestingly Professor Cliver cites an unconnected study in California of sporadic salmonellosis which included cutting boards among many risk factors by Professor Philip Class. It revealed that those using wooden cutting boards in their home kitchens were less than half as likely as average to contract salmonellosis, those using synthetic (plastic or glass) cutting boards were about twice as likely as average to contract salmonellosis.

This is as far as I can find the only academic research comparing wood and other materials, the results clearly say a new plastic board works well as does a new or old wooden board, the real dangerous one is a plastic board with cuts in it, which of course they all have once you have used them. So if you inevitably have cuts in the board sensible advice would be to use wood? well no current advice is as soon as your board has cuts throw it ways and get a new one. 

UK Food Standards Agency link

"True or false? Plastic chopping boards are more hygienic than wooden ones.

False – it’s a myth
There isn’t any strong evidence that one type of chopping
board is more or less hygienic than another, whether plastic,
wooden, glass or even marble. What is important is that
the board gets cleaned properly after every use and is
replaced if it gets damaged, for example from deep cuts or
scoring. You could also use separate chopping boards for
raw and ready-to-eat foods."

Food safety authority of Ireland link

"Wooden chopping boards can be used for food preparation once they are kept in a clean and hygienic condition. Generally, all surfaces which come in contact with food must be of sound condition and be easy to clean and where necessary disinfect. They must be made of smooth, washable, corrosion resistant and non-toxic material. Chopping boards must be constructed in a way that will minimize the risk of contamination. They must be kept in a good state of repair.

Whether wooden or plastic chopping boards are used it is essential that they are in good condition. Deeply scored chopping boards are more difficult to clean and can harbour harmful microorganisms which can contaminate food. They should be re-planed or if this is not an option they should be thrown away and replaced by new boards."

USDA link

"Which is better, wooden, or plastic cutting boards? Consumers may choose either wood or a nonporous surface cutting board such as plastic, marble, glass, or pyroceramic. Nonporous surfaces are easier to clean than wood.

All plastic and wooden cutting boards wear out over time. Once cutting
boards become excessively worn or develop hard-to-clean grooves, they
should be discarded."

Despite the evidence and official advice there are still lots of folk out there that think plastic just has to be better. This advice from was recently sent to me it's a photograph of advice in a National Trust volunteers basecamp kitchen. I will be asking the Trust on what evidence they base this advice.

Some of the many articles online are simply wrong and misleading such as this there are many folk out there making a lot of money from making and selling cutting boards of various types and many of the online articles are linked back to folk on a sales pitch. The wikipedia article on cutting boards changes regularly depending on whether the bamboo, wood or plastic folk edited it last. Whilst I sell wooden bowls and plates and have an interest in sustainable local materials I do try to present objective facts so folk can make their own mind up. 

Whatever board you use be aware that the most common way to make yourself ill in the kitchen is cross contamination, you cut raw meat then use the same board, knife or fingers for the lettuce or bread then leave it in a warm environment for an hour for the bacteria breed up to dangerous levels. BBQ season is best for this, not because we under-cook the chicken but because blokes doing the cooking in the garden don't understand the danger of cross contamination and are not so hot on hygiene.

Olympic bowls

My little tribute to the Olympics, well as a bowlturner how could I not?

And I also wanted to share daughter Jojo's latest spoon done entirely on her own, I am really very proud of her.

is your life a success?

My mate Barn is with me this week and as always we have interesting discussions on all sorts of topics. Today we are thinking about success. I guess we all have an inner feeling of whether we have made it or not, many of us will feel maybe we aren't quite what our parents might have hoped for. Maybe we don't earn as much money as some or have expensive cars, homes and holidays as our neighbours.

It seems that society today judges success primarily on the basis of how much we consume. New expensive clothes, expensive haircuts, expensive bodies honed at the expensive gym and fed on expensive food these seem to be the outward signs of success. We don't even have to earn it, you can win it on the lottery or inherit it, so long as you are spending and have all the right stuff you are doing well.

I remember whilst hitch hiking around the USA in my late teens having something of an epiphany.  I was queuing up (or should I say standing in line) to be let in to a homeless hostel for food and a bed for the night. I found the experience very degrading and was feeling very sorry for myself but as we waited I realised that the other folk in the queue were no different to any other group of folk I had met anywhere. Despite having nothing there were the same proportion of happy jokey folk cheering everyone else up and down and miserable ones. George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" had originally given me the confidence to travel without money and regard life experience as valuable even tough experiences.

When I look at others today I judge folk as successful if they have achieved happy stable family homes to raise happy self confident kids. I judge people on how much they put back in to society, we all know folk in our communities that are always doing stuff for other folk, who are reliable, honest and follow through on promises. Other folk I admire work with kids taking them out on the hill or introducing them to craft or inspiring them in different ways, or work with the elderly, ill and disenfranchised of society. This work in turn seems to bring an inner fulfillment whereas those in pursuit of material success will always compare themselves to the 2% of the world that have more rather than the 98% that have less and so still feel badly done by. Our current incredible level of material wealth does not seem to create happiness or inner fulfillment.

The problem is that whilst intellectually I can take this position and encourage others to do so too when we come to judge ourselves (as we all do) it is hard not to acknowledge that by the standards of society today we are not really doing very well. I guess the only answer to that is we have to change the standards by which society judges success. Let's get rid of gross domestic product  GDP and go with gross domestic happiness GDH

Here's a bit of Banksy

would you post a review of one of my carving courses?

Over the last 7 years I have had the pleasure and good company of several hundred wonderful folk on my spoon and bowl carving courses. I know many of you read the blog. There is a new website which I very much like set up by Kate Dew-Martin, it gives a range of craft courses available in the UK and gives the chance for folk who have done the courses to post reviews. Many folk send me lovely emails after courses which is part of what encourages me to keep running them but if anyone has the time to share their experiences online I would obviously appreciate it. If are game for leaving a comment which is incredibly easy to do (no login or anything just type away) this is the link.
Have a look around whilst you're there you may find other courses you fancy.

NIACE craft toolkit, how to turn a hobby into a business

Today I was in London meeting with Skills Minister John Hayes and the BIS craft skills advisory board. One of the things discussed was the NIACE craft toolkit. We helped publicise the call for input to this document a while ago and it's good to see the finished website with a wealth of information. Perhaps one of the more interesting sections is the series of profiles of 50 or so craftspeople telling how they got into doing what they do. I am one of them and there are a lot of my friends and other Heritage Crafts Association members on there too which is nice to see. The "Value of Craft" section has some interesting articles and thoughts, then there are various useful links for instance to lists of awards and bursaries.

Our meeting was held at the Prince's school of traditional arts, an inspiring place full of creativity. We did a bit of a tour and the Minister joined in a life drawing session. Talking about the work of the school the Minister said "We think of the arts as being about creativity, and of course they are, but that creativity channeled into disciplined learning and traditions which are drawing on a long history is about delivering excellence." The students were learning drawing as part of an intensive and inspirational 3 week "building skills" program. I was surprised to be spotted by one of the students who had previously been on one of my bowlcarving courses and is now enrolled on the foundation's 8 month craft course. What a fantastic opportunity.

 To me the ethos of the building was well summed up by this piece of writing pinned up beside somebody's desk.

 I would love to be able to share with you the outcomes of the meeting, there are really very exciting progressions as the traditional crafts are finally recognised as an important sector with great opportunity for investment, promotion and growth. Sadly all the documents and projects we are discussing are still at draft stage and readers will have to wait until they are officially launched, it's exciting stuff though. Last photo to share, after my 2 1/2hour journey home I come over the hill into Edale and this is the view that awaits me, my workshop is at the end of the valley toward the left of the picture and my home toward the right. I am told that rainfall so far this year has been 32" with 10" in June alone, it does make for a green and pleasant land though.

Tomorrow I pack the van and head off for another 4 days voluntary work manning the Heritage Crafts Association stand at my favourite art and craft event of the year Art in Action near Oxford. If you are visiting we are in the Market area, pop by and say hello.

best spoon carving courses in the UK?

I started carving spoons 21 years ago inspired by Wille Sundqvists book "Swedish Carving Technique" back then there were no spoon carving courses the UK green woodworking scene was all about making windsor chairs on pole lathes.


I was totally inspired by Wille Sunqvist "Carved utensils and other objects are a joy to use and live with. They are the lasting result of meaningful work. Beyond this, carving is a way of having fun together."

Wille Sunqvist spoons

Robin Wood with Wille Sunqvist

Having spent more than 10 years full time as a woodworker in 2005 I decided it was time to start passing my skills on and I felt spoon carving and the skills of axe and knife use were the thing that the UK green wood scene was missing, incredible as it may seem given the current interest no one was doing it then. Whilst I enjoy my day job of making wooden utensils I really enjoyed the teaching, particularly watching beginners go from first awkward attempts to skilled and confident knife users in just a few days. Then there were the messages from students like this from Sarah Blackwell after I ran a course for Forest school teachers.

"Robin I had a wonderful time and I know the feedback from everyone was superb. Everyone felt empowered by the way you taught and how you demonstrated a gradual build up of understanding and progression of skills and understanding throughout the weekend."

Well 7 years on and several hundred students later there seem to be lots of spooncarving courses out there, quite a few run by friends and past students so I thought it would be good to post pics and links to  a few that I know of, I have not been on any of these courses so don't know how good they are, carving good spoons doesn't necessarily make you a good teacher. Likewise the fact I haven't included someone here doesn't mean anything either, other than lack of space or perhaps I don't know of them.

First up the reason I started this blog post, in the current edition of Living Woods magazine there is an advert for a spooncarving course with "Jack Raven Bushcraft" in Kent, I had not heard of them but the nice pic showed good spoons, several of which were in styles I knew well.

A flick through the website shows their carving instructor is Dave Hoyle, a lovely chap who has been on all my courses and also the course we organised with Fritiof Runhal last year.
This is Dave on a sharpening day  I ran last year and carving on Fritiof's course 

In the Lake District my good friend and excellent carver Steve Tomlin runs courses. Steve also came on Fritiof's course see his write up here. Steve is one of the most skillful and multi-talented craftspeople I know.

Fritiof Runhall, Steve Tomlin, Barn Carder

Martin Damen is another past student who has done most of my courses and now teaches in Oxfordshire.

Riichard Law is another very nice chap and past student who teaches in Yorkshire I love his dry yorkshire humour.

My good friend Barn Carder (Barn the spoon) has helped me run many courses, carved more spoons than anyone in the UK and teaches
I am not sure if he has current course dates up anywhere here are some or contact him to see where and when he is teaching.

One friend that has never been on a course but I would be happy to recommend is Sean Hellman, another very talented green woodworker in Devon. Though Sean is offering one day courses in spoon carving including sharpening. I did these when I started and it is what people ask for but I having experimented I find 3 days is the perfect time to learn and embed the skills, one day is really only a taster.

My friend Guy Mallinson has one of the most beautiful woodland workshops in the country as seen on Monty Don's mastercrafts series. Ben Orford teaches his spoon courses, I have known Ben over ten years since he was an apprentice with Mike Abbott and Gudrun Lietz and have helped him develop his bowl turning and spoon carving tools, he is a good carver and nice guy.

Having bigged up everybody else I should post a link to my own spooncarving course page and also to SPOONFEST which promises to be a fantastic weekend either as an introduction to what is possible spooncarving or as inspiration for those that are well along the way.
Then for the sake of completeness I shall include various other courses I know of but have no experience of if you know others let me know and I'll add them in here.

Jon  Mac in Devon, spooncarving with a bushcraft slant.

David Knight in the North East


It really is incredible to see how the interest in spoons has ballooned in such a short time. I think it is just such a great way to work green wood and fits into our lifestyles today. You only need a few tools, no dedicated workshop space and small diameter green wood as your raw material which is freely available everywhere. It's amazing really that the current spooncarving resurgence didn't start years ago.

snibbskål

I was just coresponding with someone about traditional Scandinavian turned vessels and wanted to post a link to pictures of snibbskål online, I couldn't find any so thought I would share some pics I took in museums in Sweden in 2003, turns out I remembered the spelling wrong and can now add links to lots of great pictures.

Google translates snibbskål  as "ear cup" my Swedish friends told me snibb means pretty much the same as tab in English, it can be the corner of a piece of fabric, anything that sticks out or an ear lobe (ears were also nicknamed tabs when I was young). skål means bowl, it is also the standard toast when drinking alcohol and the link between bowls and drinking is strong.

So here are a collection of bowls with tabs, the ones normally reffered to as snibbskål are the square pair in the middle with 4 tabs.

 I particularly loved this bowl and made many copies of it 7 or 8 years ago.

 

the profile is very sweet, a simple humble bowl that someone has eaten breakfast or soup from for many many years I love it dearly.

 here then is the standard snibbskål

 they are often painted, and often have steps in the internal profile

Side  profile

 Dates are not uncommon and most are 18th or early 19th c.

 When you are turning on a pole lathe and cutting blanks out with an axe then the corners are one of the more difficult bits to cut off. If you are good on the lathe then this is a very fast way to make a bowl. This one feels like a very utilitarian bowl not precious.

 And here a Swedish bowlturners lathe just like the old British ones.

If you do a google image search for snibbskål you'll see lots more or follow this link for a great museum collection http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/search?name=Snibbsk%C3%A5l

vanilla

When I was a kid vanilla meant cheap, bland sweet things without other "proper" flavours in. How wrong can you be?
A few weeks ago in France I had the most exquisite culinary experience in the form of a creme brulee made in heaven, well it tasted like it was, pure ambrosia. Here is the original

These are my first attempts at replication. They were by most standards superb and look very like the photos from the recipe I used. They were sadly not up there with the perfect brulee living in my memory. The bone spoons are perfect.

 What was better about the French one? Well mine was a great custard but it didn't have the same variety of texture as the original, it was all the same where the French one had some almost runny custard and some more set, the topping too was a lovely mix of crunchy, brittle and hard where mine was pretty much a thin sheet of toffee. Texture aside the flavour of mine was not as powerful or fragrant as the original. The recipe used a whole vanilla pod which cost me £2.50 in the supermarket. So next try will involve more vanilla, I  found the wonderful vanilla mart online where vanilla heads can satisfy their every whim and cheap too, 20 pods for £5.50 delivered. So next batch will have two pods in and maybe steeped for longer in the cream until it's oozing vanilla, I shall get some nice demerara sugar for the top and steep that with another vanilla pod to make vanilla sugar. I am not sure if the wider ramekins help the French version when I have my recipe sorted I would love to find a potter making nice ramekins. I'll keep you posted and in the meantime if anyone else makes great brulees or has any other fantastic recipes to share let me know.

carving wooden spoons in public

On my last spooncarving course one of the students was TV presenter and green woodworking enthusiast Adam Hart Davis. He has been greenwoodworking for many years and is particularly fond of spooncarving. I was inspired to hear that Adam carves spoons on the train. I travel to London fairly often and have been learning to knit but spooncarving on the train, there's an idea. Adam catches most of the shavings in a sheet but also carries a small hand held vacuum cleaner for tidying up when he has finished. Last week Adam went from Totnes to London on Tuesday, to Birmingham on Wednesday, and back to Totnes on Thursday, and on each day he finished another spoon. Here he is on the train working on a curved sycamore spoon.

O was inspired enough and this week had to take my daughter to the doctors so rather than waste an hour reading old magazines I took my spoons. It was a lovely day so I sat on a bench outside carving away. I have a linen pinny that I sometimes use at home to catch the chips. I took rough carved spoons which just needed the fine work doing on them, I think axe work in public may not be the best idea.

Some readers will know my friend Barn the Spoon who also carves in public though he is doing it as a sales pitch, the busking spoonmaker. It's interesting that despite the knife frenzy in the media I have not heard of any reaction to public carving other than surprise and genuine interest.

I often carve spoons at shows but it somehow felt very different doing it outside the doctors, the one is sort of a public performance, I am there as part of the attractions for people to watch something interesting and unusual. Carving outside the doctors I am just doing something normal, like knitting or reading a book and that is the way spooncarving should be. For anyone not sure about the legalities of carving in public in the UK basically you are allowed to have with you a non locking folding knife with blade length no more than 3 1/4". For a larger folder, a locking folder of a fixed blade knife however big or small you have to have "good reason". A chef on his way to work has good reason, a youth outside a night club does not. A spooncarver minding his own business outside the doctors or on the train I believe has good reason, in fact the knife is no different in the eyes of the law to a 10" knitting needle.
Anyway let's finish with one more photo of carving in public, this is from the back cover of the book that started my interest in spoons 20 years ago. This is Wille Sundqvist also carving on the train.

Jim the pot

These pots are made by a friend "Jim The Pot". He throws more pots than any other potter I know and that repetition leads to great skill and a lovely feeling of freedom and life in the work. He is not known amongst the pottery world or craft world though because he doesn't do craft fairs or potfests.  Jim specialises in making replica work for museums and re-enactors.

 This is Jim's beer money, the little earthenware pots are watering sprinklers and no one can resist one after seeing them demonstrated, I think he sells them for £4 so it's pocket money but he makes them very very fast and those £4 add up.

 The beauty of selling to re-enactors is they use the work, and use it hard so you see it age and learn more about how the originals lived. I have never cooked over an open fire in a pot but it is the way most of our ancestors cooked most of the time.

 These guys on the left look like salt glaze stoneware but Jim fires them with bracken, apparently there is something in the bracken that gives a similar effect to the salt.

 This is his display when out at shows, see the hand spun wheel at the front, he throws on this faster than most potters would on an electric wheel.

Jim learned on an incredible sounding course at Derby College, same tutor as Doug Fitch and Geoff Fuller, Nic Collins and many more. Apparently the first week they were shown 40 lumps of clay and told to make 40 things identical. Didn't matter what, bowls dishes, plates, just 40 the same.  Within 3 weeks 1/3 of the class had left, they presumably wanted to be arty sculptural ceramicists but those that stayed developed the skills and understanding of materials they needed to make the things they wanted to make. I am sorry not to remember the tutors name he was clearly an inspiring guy.

To buy Jim's very reasonably priced pots see his website here 

mazer

Just a quick snap of a mazer before it was posted off today.

This one is made of field maple with a sterling silver rim.

spoon and bowl carving courses

Here are pics from bowl and spooncarving courses just finished. Rob Nicholson is a good greenwoodworker but this was his first go at carving bowls, he did a nice blog post showing all the stages here.

 Here are a couple of finished bowls

and then it was on to spooncarving first cutting suitable raw material with a big Japanese pull saw.

splitting the blank, this is Martin Hazel, good name for a woodworker and a talented basketmaker and spooncarver.

 

fairly soon we had a bunch of spoon blanks roughed out

One of the nice things about crafty courses is how much fun they are and how everyone supports each other, so different from competitive craft TV programs. This is Rebecca and Adam Hart Davis (off of the telly) both excellent carvers. Adam apparently carves on the train I'd love to see that.

 Some finely finished work, these are Rebecca's, the tool roll is a cheapie from Lidl but works well

 Keith roughing out a big spoon from willow.

 And Martin's collection, he was productive.

 

and here Lindsey is getting stuck in to hollowing out a kuksa with the adze

the end product of all this carving though is having nice things to use at the table strawbs and cream with spoons by Fritiof Runhall.

and if your utensils are nice then washing up becomes a joy, these are all the soup bowls after lunch on a spoon course.