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Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,719
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Nov 2003
Posts: 2,719 |
It's a mistake to get too caught up on Janka hardness in a board. Texture, grain, specific gravity, strength, and tangential and radial stability are all equally or more important. Many very hard woods are actually totally unsuitable for cutting boards due to being open grained, meaning large pores. Hard maple is as close to optimum as it gets; it's a 'hard' wood, fine textured, closed grain with very small pores, tangential stability approaches 10%, and specific gravity is .63. It is also very dense, weighing 3.3 lbs/bf. It's nice when your 18x24x2.25 board weighs 25-30 lbs and doesn't scoot around on your countertop.
As add pointed out be careful and research what you need. Boos and others offer cheaper edge grained products in addition to their end grained offerings. One's needs vary. In fact,'there are reasons behind smaller vs larger end grained pieces and patterns. My wife has different boards for rocking cut and drawing/slicing vs chopping for instance.
Good thread...
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 5,731
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 5,731 |
From my experience, I would say it depends on how fast you want to slice and how often you want to sharpen your knives! The harder the board, the faster you'll slice, but you'll sharpen more often. The hardest, fastest board I've ever used was bamboo. The slowest probably end grain maple. My Aunt's are end grain maple, and for them, (old and uncoordinated) that's a good thing. I don't want to cut 100 pounds of vegetables on them. I have laminated maple, which is still pretty slow. Plastic, which is still slow. Oak, olive wood, and bamboo are faster. I like bamboo. No drag. Your knives will get dull faster though. For bacteria, I cut meats on their own plastic board. I wash boards regularly. My interesting exception is my big board for rolling dough. Pizza and pasta dough have eggs in them, but I never wash my dough rolling board. Dough won't stick as bad if I don't wash it. Kind of like a cast iron pan!
"I didn't get the sophisticated gene in this family. I started the sophisticated gene in this family." Willie Robertson
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