Treating oak cross section

[chocccie]

I want to use some of my oak as chopping boards for the kitchen.  I've seen similar in fancy shops costing rather a lot!

My question is, what do I need to do to the wood in order to stop germs harbouring?  And should I use green or aged wood?

I need quite a few new chopping boards and thought it would be better to use what's on my land rather than a board which has a lot of carbon miles attached to it (but only if I can treat it in keeping with this).

Thanks folks

[Jonzjob]

There was a TV test done to compair plastic chopping boards with wooden ones.

What they did was to coat 1 plastic and 1 wooden board with meat residue and leave them in a warm invironment (sorry about spelling, it's late?) overnight and then check them in the morning. They found that the plastic, which had been treated to stop bugs, was nicely coated with loads of nasties. But the wooden one was clean and clear of bugs.It turned out after more checks tha the wooden board has natural ezenzimes that kill the bugs.

I am not sure that oak is the best wood for this, because it has a lot of tannin in it, but what you need is for the oak to be well dried, not just 'bin lying around for a few months'. Cut it across the grain into slices about 2 inches thick. Make sure that the wood is in good condition and not going soft or cracked. Sand it down till you have a good surface and then seal it with some sunflower oil. The end grain doesn't suffer so much from being cut as cross grain does as the knife s going into the grain and not cutting across the fibres.

Personally I would go for beech or elm, cut it into 2 X 1 inch strips, glue 4 strips together with epoxy resin to form a 'battenburg' type cake, cut slices of the 'cake' about 2 inches thick and glue them together to form the size of the board you want, once again using epoxie resin. Complicated and long winded making sure that the strips are square and straight, but you finish up with a lovely board that will serve well and be clean to use. we have had ours for well over 20 years!!!