Daryl Rosenblatt

Velveted chicken is a fancy term for marinating small pieces of chicken so you can brag you can stir fry an authentic Chinese dish.

Velveeted chicken is a fancy term for adding processed cheese food to chicken so you can brag you can still make a TV dinner.

Both probably taste just fine, However, if you cut slices of Velveeta on an open pored cutting board made with open pored woods, you may never see those slices again; they might just get stuck in the pores of the board, so your family will be disappointed waiting for a Velveeta Chicken that will never happen. Don’t disappoint your family at dinner time, stick with maple or cherry for a cutting board.

Well, last night was velveted chicken with broccoli and shitakes over rice noodles.

I wouldn’t ever suggest an open pored wood. Maybe oak, but not mahogany or ash…even if the tannins killed the bacteria, it still has lots of small crevices for small pieces of food (and even some left over herring bones) to get lodged.

I have my own views on cutting boards and finishes. Since I do a lot of cooking, I use cutting and carving boards of many sizes. I know all those fancy cutting boards with cool patterns look great, but for cooking, they are terrible. Frank Klausz was right: When making a cutting board, just keep it simple. A good closed grained hardwood planed smooth. If you are trying to dice something small, like onions or garlic or whatever, that really nice herringbone pattern of several woods makes for difficult cutting. Likewise with open pored woods. Stick with maple or cherry if you can. Walnut, padauk, mahogany, oak and ash have wonderful places in furniture, but not where small bits of food are concerned and the bacteria that goes with it.

I do NOT believe in a finish for a cutting board. Sure, mineral oil or a non toxic wax can look good, but they don’t last. You need to keep those boards clean, and soap and hot water always work (my boards are all at 6/4 cherry, so they don’t move much), but to disinfect, you need something like lemon juice, or a dilute vinegar solution. So no oil or wax finish will ever last. And no, all those expensive teak cutting boards again look cool, but are hell on your knives. Bamboo is a bit tough on knives also, but is a great cutting board surface, it’s naturally antibacterial. I’ve never worked with bamboo though, I hear it’s tough to work with.

So my suggestion is not worry about what finish to use, since there really shouldn’t be any.

In giving it some more thought, I think we first have to define what we mean by toothed blades. There is the very fine kind, almost like a saw, to great that surface for veneering. Then there is the more coarse type, Lie Nielsen used to sell those, to help hand plane a highly figured board. We’ve focused on the former, and I can see why that boss said to do it that way: His grandpa told him, and it was accepted as fact that the more surface area the better for adhesion, but modern chemistry has proven otherwise. Glues work better when the surfaces are smoother, and feel free to ask me why (I can’t answer why, but you can ask me anyway). And now the toothed blade for woods like curly maple and curly cherry. First, why are you planing them anyway, they should be sanded. And second, you can plane them by hand (one of my proud moments was hand planing curly bubinga, but again, why bother. If done with power tools, the new segmented cutterhead does that work for you, and if by hand, the more prevalent use of both Japanese planes and low angle planes for the masses helps as well but frankly, I think it’s the hand random orbit sander that makes a toothed plane no longer needed in a toolbox for figured wood.

So for toothing veneer, maybe it’s good for using a veneer hammer and hot hide glue, but if using regular wood glue (you absolutely can, more wives tales, it really won’t creep), Unibond 800 or other catalyzed glue or even contact cement (don’t use contact cement….just don’t), a smooth surface works better (and a big tip…make sure you’ve flattened the veneers for good, and no a quick spray of those commercial formulas is only good for a day or two).

And by all means, let’s air this out even more…anyone agree? Disagree? Want to add or subtract (doing so will only make this Forum multiply, but if argumentative, divide).

Glue has plenty enough places to hide in my shop. Usually, the newer the bottle and the more pressing the need, the more it hides. If my bench or my shop floor were toothed, then it would double and triple my time in looking for it, since the Newtonian formula proving the bottle will always be in the last place I look/the first place I should have looked (the original Ω/α), because the sum of the squares of the teeth will always exceed my need to glue/clamps owned ratio.

Who am I to argue with Isaac Newton (and yes, Joe, I know you are such a one. Have at it)?

I remember when Lie Nielsen sold toothed blades, I think that was generated by the old timers (which, dang it, we now are!! How did that happen?). I think that started back when hide glue was the norm, and it was felt, perhaps proven, that a greater surface area was needed for adhesion. Modern adhesives work better when the surface is smooth, not rough, so there is no need with modern glues to rough it up. I would continue to do so with hide glue though, unless research shows not to. However Charlie, you use hide glue for veneer work, and you are pretty much a smoothie.

I also think we might want to consider not using the modern glues for pieces we want to hand down. A century or less from know, furniture repair people will invent new curses for trying to separate out pieced that were glued with epoxy, or even fully cured yellow glue. Two hundred years from now, heat will still loosen hide glue, but it’s going to be much harder to take apart the newer glued stuff.

The solution is easy. If you see a dime, toss down a nickel and another dime. You might not bend for a dime, but you might for a quarter.

No matter what route you take, you want to make sure two of the wheels or casters (generally the rear two) are mobile. The fronts can be fixed. And don’t forget the brake.

Titebond and Elmer’s are virtually the same, with one very big difference. Elmer’s is made in China, Titebond is made in Ohio. Another difference is that Titebond is “borated” which the Franklin Adhesive engineer made it sound like it was important, but I’m not sure what it means. They sell the white version in the middle of the country, the tan version around here. I prefer the white since it dries clearer, so I order a gallon of it and keep it in my basement on a cool shelf. It’s generally in the 60s down there, and pretty dry, so the shelf life is really very long (tip per Franklin: refrigerate your white or tan wood glue and it will keep forever).

The US vs China difference is enough for me to stick with Titebond. And if you do a quick search you will find Franklin’s phone no (I think it’s on the bottles), you can ask them any glue question and they will either know or get you the answer.