Spalted Wood for Pepper Mill?

Re: Spalted Wood for Pepper Mill?

Leo Van Der Loo

>Why not Jen, the funges is dead as soon as the wood is dry, and if you don't trust that, you could always use ca to close the grain, pour it in and turn around, go for it.

Have fun and take care

Leo V

Re: Spalted Wood for Pepper Mill?

Robert Simmons, Atlanta

>I'd seal the grain inside with shellac or something akin to it before loading up the pepper, but I would do that with any wood that has open grain or tends towards being soft. You don't really want to look too closely at the fungal load in you average pepper anyway. They're different fungi, but they are there none the less. Many biology students give up on spices for a while after taking food micro.

Robert

Re: Spalted Wood for Pepper Mill?

Jorge Castaneda

>Hi Jen,

From a long time post I remember that the inside of a pepper mill gets quite worn out by abrasion, so maybe it is not a good idea to use such a soft material, I'll go for the hardest you have around.

$0.02

Jorge

Re: Spalted Wood for Pepper Mill?

Bob Persing (Skillman NJ)

>Jen,

One of the mills I made recently (pic posted here) used some maple that shows signs of some staining etc. When I finished turning the mill I coated the inside (bore) of the mill using "Salad Bowl Finish". I used a cloth with a generous amount of finish and pushed it through the bore of the mill. Gave it two coats. I did this just to be on the safe side. If the wood were particularly pourous I would have applied more coats to seal the surface. I completed this interior work before proceeding to finish the exterior of the mill. Just my approach.

BobP

Re: Spalted Wood for Pepper Mill?

Andy in Raleigh

>Look inside a well used mill and you will see some abrasion occurs from the pepper kernels. Over time you will ingest some extremely small amounts of wood. You can coat it and then you will ingest some finish for a while and then some wood. In either case, the amount on any given serving is likely to be so small that I doubt even very regular use will cause any harm.

Re: Spalted Wood for Pepper Mill?

Russ Fairfield

>Never use a finish to solve a problem with the wood. Always consider the surface that is in contact with the edibles as being "bare wood", because it will eventually be that way. No finish is forever. They all wear away. Some just wear away slower than others. In the end there will be bare wood.

Think of it as being bare wood without any finish, and you can answer your question by asking it of yourself.

Would you buy a salad bowl that had soft or punky spalted wood in it?

Would you appreciate finding the same soft wood hidden on the inside of a peppermill??

You might want to use no finish on inside of a more solid wood for your peppermills.

Much ado about nothing.

Dave Smith, Longview, WA

>Hi Jennifer,

Mr. Simmons has addressed the problem of what is on the pepper already. My point is that the spores that cause spalting in wood are in the soil where the greens for salad grow. Since we do not sanitize the salad fixings, we are ingesting these spores anyway. Any spores that may be added by disintegration of the surface of the pepper mill are not significant.

Sealing the soft wood will extend the life of the mill. For home use, unless you use pepper like my wife, the mill will outlast the user.

Dave Smith

Don't need no stinking pepper on my food in Longview, WA.

Yes, but....

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

>...only if you use spalted peppercorns.

Tommy