In November, I purchased an entire vintage 1950's Turquoise GE Metal Kitchen Cabinet set. It included the electric stove (see previous post) which I have since sold. Ah, the joys of buying and selling. Took the buyer one month to come and pick up the stove! I had to threaten them with giving back their money and putting it back up for sale to get them to commit to a date to pick it up! I'm not someones storage unit! Moving on....included in the set was a section that has a 36" wide section of butcher block. This will be going into our basement for additional storage and a place to do work on. It had not been cleaned or treated for years. I decide that before I was going to put it inside the house (it's now resting in the garage), I wanted to clean up the top a little. I did a little research and found that sanding and then rubbing it down with mineral oil is the way to deal with butcher block. I got out the sanding block and some 100 grit sand paper and went to town. Sorry, but I didn't think to take any pics until I'd taken a couple of passes with the sandpaper...here's the 1st pass......
I then remembered that I had a Makita finish sander and because the hand sanding was wearing me out....out came the finish sander and I used 150 grit paper....what a easier job that was. It was a little dustier, but I was willing to pay the price...
Next pic is the after I finished with the finish sander. Much smoother and cleaner! Will make for a very nice surface to work on.
It is hard to see a difference between the 1st pass and the results of the finish sander, but trust me, what it looked like before I started sanding is a far cry from what it looks and feels like now! Here's a pic of the front of the cabinet with the sanded butcher block.
Next step will be finding some mineral oil and treating it. I have other oils such as Teak and Tung oil, but these apparently are not appropriate for butcher block. Tung oil, I've been told is poisonous and should not be used on a food preparation surface, not that this butcher block will be, but who knows what the future holds.
3 comments:
It's looking good! You can get mineral oil at a drugstore or probably any grocery store.
Home Depot carries it....on my way home from work will grab some tomorrow.
No doubt this is looking great, i would love to see how it will look after treating it with some mineral oil.
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