Building food safe plywood butcher blocks

Bob in St. Louis

Bob in St. Louis

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Hey all,

I want to build cutting boards and am wondering about food safety.

I do quite a bit of wood working, and a product I use quite a bit is a voidless Baltic Birch plywood. I think the cut end of the plywood when stacked (showing the ply layers) looks pretty cool. My goal is to make cutting boards with the entire top surface being the exposed layers.

I'm not worried about the glue I use, and I'm not worried about waterproofing the piece, but I'm very worried about the glue used at the plywood factory and whether it's food safe or not.

Picture a hot juicy steak fresh off the grill "bleeding out" laying on the cutting board soaking up chemicals.....
I've been told that voidless Russian plywoods are epoxied together and are 'automatically' food safe, but the people weren't 100% confident.

Any info would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys!
Bob
 
I'd never use plywood for a cutting board, to many issues from toxicity of the glue to falling apart after a while due to delamination. I know birch is a relatively hard wood but i'm not sure it'd stand up to the abuse like maple. I'd stick to the usual woods for cutting boards.
 
Zak said:
I'd never use plywood for a cutting board, to many issues from toxicity of the glue to falling apart after a while due to delamination. I know birch is a relatively hard wood but i'm not sure it'd stand up to the abuse like maple. I'd stick to the usual woods for cutting boards.
Click to expand...

I agree with Zak.
 
Check the MSDS for the glue used. As far as I know, the only food safe glue out there is made by Tightbond...II or III, I don't remember exactly. But I agree, as a general rule, plywood is out of the question for this type of use.
 
Aahhhh crap.... You guys are letting the wind out of my sails. ha ha
But I am looking for the truth.

Remember, I'm not using "regular" Home Depot kinda plywood, it's Russian Baltic Birch.
(That's supposed to make a difference????)
 
Tim,
I didn't know Titebond was food safe. Cool.
For the layers that I laminate, I was going with an epoxy, not woodglue.
 
The type of wood doesn't really matter IMO, it's the glue used. Remember, the regular Tightbond isn't food safe, it's either the Tightbond II or III. It's been a while since I made my cutting boards. But, it says right on the bottle that it's food safe and I'm sure that you could google it before hand.

Are you turning the wood on it's side for a side grain type of board or is it going to be the top layer with an exposed face/surface grain?
 
I agree with the others and would not chance it, however, here's an idea for you- if you just have to have the plywood look you could go ahead and make your board, then lay a sheet of plexi or polycarbonate over it? Eventually it'll get scratched from cutting but you could simply replace it when it gets ugly. Just a thought.
 
I called a customer that makes plywood(Boise Cascade) and the glue that they use is not foodsafe.Looks like you need to go a different route.
 
CarolinaQue said:
Check the MSDS for the glue used. As far as I know, the only food safe glue out there is made by Tightbond...II or III, I don't remember exactly. But I agree, as a general rule, plywood is out of the question for this type of use.
Click to expand...

MSDS doesn't say anything about injesting because its "not likely"

I did see where the glue used was Phenolic. Couldn't find it, but Phenol is not food safe.

http://www.wolstenholme.com/resource-center/

 
CarolinaQue said:
Are you turning the wood on it's side for a side grain type of board or is it going to be the top layer with an exposed face/surface grain?
Click to expand...
My plan was to cut 2" wide strips 20" long and glue them together until I had a board about 24" wide.
That way, the top of the cutting surface would be hundreds of laminated layers of the wood going across.

1Funvet, thanks for checking for me. Very good to know.
 
I'm a hack wood worker and use lots of batic bich ply. I too like the expose edge look and got several pieces with it.

I know exactly the method your talking a bout. A buddy just did that to form the front of a pair os speakers. He reported pain in the but to get a flush face. Better have a planer.

I think i would just stack them and top it with a butcher block.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Tapatalk 2
 
Sounds like a cool idea. IMO, the plywood will never ever be in touch with food. The plywood will never get wet nor will the dry wood or dry glue contaminate the knives. I don't see what the cause for concern is for people.

Edit: I read the whole thing wrong. I'm going to agree with the others on this one. Plywood is going to be really soft as well as the glue and delamination issue.
 
Last edited:
I would think that if this was a safe process, there would be other people out there doing it already. IMO, the glue in the plywood is not safe and it would delaminate over time, no matter what type of finish you put on it. Another thing to consider is that birch is a softer wood. It is not like oak or hard maple.
 
---k--- said:
I'm a hack wood worker and use lots of batic bich ply. I too like the expose edge look and got several pieces with it.

I know exactly the method your talking a bout. A buddy just did that to form the front of a pair os speakers. He reported pain in the but to get a flush face. Better have a planer.
Click to expand...
Yip, that's where I've got all the extra pieces from, is building speakers.

Looks like the general thought isn't a good idea though.
I didn't think about the knife edge though, but some of these bamboo boards are pretty hard.
 
I used Baltic Birch plywood to build my teardrop camper, and even used it on my galley countertop, sealed with water-based polyurethane. But, I didn't use the end grain.

If you could seal the cutting board with something that could stand up to a knife, it should be okay, but I don't know what you would use as a sealer.

CD
 
Cool idea. And there are some buts with that. Behlen clear salad bowl finish (grizzly industries model H3932) would take care of sealing and any toxicity problems. It would be hard on knives though. with that many layers over that width I would think the pattern would be lost/busy to the eye. Banding with two on edge layers with a solid field would look great too.
 
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