Bowl making with router

[J Bryngelson]

I purchased from Rockler a kit to make bowls using router.  Would like suggestions about wood to use, Pine? Red Oak? Popular?

[Ken Darga]

J,

Wood bowls for food product.

My first choice is maple.

Such as used in butcher blocks and cutting boards.

Maple is a hard wood, and is ideal for making such products.

Red Oak has overly large pores (like drinking straws) so it makes for poor food servicing bowls, but okay for displaying fruit or displays.

Not my choice---the pores can hold undesirable product, such a food particles that can become rancid (the disagreeable odor or taste of decomposing oils or fats).

Avoid soft woods, for wood bowls.

Wood bowls can be made from other suitable solid hardwoods, 

ex, bamboo, cherry, black cherry, birch, Red Maple, Acacia, mango wood.

 

Cherry wood produces the toughest, most beautiful wooden bowls.

 

Some wood bowls can be made from walnut.

 

Acacia wood bowls:

  ,

 

Bamboo has beauty and unique properties

 

Maple butcher blocks and cutting boards can be readily purchased and

machined to the desired shape and size.

Maple cutting board

    

Cutting boards can be cut to the desired diameter, stacked and glued together, to

form a thicker section and then machined into the desired bowl shape and size.

Upon completion, the wood needs to be sealed with a ''food grade mineral oil".

Use and care fo wood bowls---treat the same as butcher blocks and cutting boards.