wood you be mine, part deux

We are horrified by the state of our kitchen. I've already mentioned the Big Bang Theory about the soy sauce explosion, right? Having somehow completely forgotten that myself, I took a look at the butcher block top on the counter next to the stove and thought hmmm, it's been well-seasoned; that looks nice! One thing the previous owners did right.



Then I remembered that these people didn't like to clean, and there were literally rivers of oil and soy sauce running down the sides of said counters.

We repaired to the internet, bent on scraping off every particle of oily mess. There was a great deal of advice about maintaining a new butcher block, and the wonderful soothing oils you can massage into your wood. It spoke of the importance of seasoning and how to keep your butcher block looking like new.

I like to cook. A lot. It pains me to remove seasoning. But it was far from new. It was like the bottom of a vat of curly fry oil, if the bottom of a vat of curly fry oil would ever be made of wood. It had to go.

First, my husband went at it with a finishing sander and some rough grit sandpaper. About 10 sheets of oil-clogged sandpaper later, he stopped. I then took it over to my friend's house, a man who knows tools. I need a belt sander, I said. You need a scraper, he said.



Because the butcher block is end-grain, you can't plane it with a hand-held plane. Sanding it is out of the question, given how much oil is on the surface. A warp in the middle of the board makes electric planing difficult, too.

So we attacked it with the scraper. It is a vintage tool with an oak handle, painted brightly with red and green at the tip. The business end has a pivot head, so you can position the thing at the right angle for scraping. The method is easy enough for us to follow: put scraper on board, push down and pull.

It makes a godawful noise, oily shavings, and ugly streaks in the wood. It works. And it makes us feel that we're not so far from our Iron Age ancestors after all.