I am building a new house and in this house i will have a kitchen island that seperates the kitchen from the living room. The island is made of Cherry stained very light (basicly natural)
On this held up by some stainless steel stand offs (from Ikia) will be a bar top for eating and drinking as the island is desinged to work as a wet bar for the living room. I intend to build said top out of solid Mahogany. The question is what do i finish this with. I would like the contrast of the lighter cherry and the darker Mahogany but i an not sure if i want to stain the mahogany. I was thinking that maybe i should just oil the wood as you can use food safe oil and renew this very eisily.
What i am afraid of is that is i use stain and then varnish it i am opening myself to all sorts of issue with water as this is designed as an area i expect to eat at a lot i expect it will get messed up.
I dont mind the idea of having to keep the finish up (like you have to with a good butcher block) I just dont want to do this and find i that i should have done somethign else. By the way this is the first time i have worked with Mahogany (allthough my father has built one boat from it and rebuilt another) so please keep in mind that i am new to this wood. I tend to work with Cherry and Oak and such.
Thanks for any ideas on this
Doug Meyer
Replies
We have a countertop in part of our kitchen that we made by poly-glueing up 2" X 2" thick solid cherry. We use it for eating, food prep, etc. It's finished only with a food-safe oil product I pick up at the hardware store. We do NOT baby this counter, but "use" it -- we cut on it, pound on it, use the apple peeler gizmo on it (LOTS of juice winds up on the counter), roll out dough on it, knead bread on it, etc. We renew the oil about once a year. Its appearance only improves with age/use.
What we do NOT do on it is leave moisture on it for long periods (as would happen if it was around a sink) or put very hot things on it (like pans right off the stove, as would happen if it was around the stove). I have also noticed that you don't want to leave metal objects, such as cans, on it if it's damp -- leaves a dark stain. Whenever such stains have cropped up, I just ran the card scraper over it lightly and that cleaned them up. I also would avoid installing it too near a stove since that could cause it to crack from uneven moisture content caused by localized heating.
If it was me (and it ain't), I'd not stain the mahogany, just oil it and let it age and use as above.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Doug,
After you have all of the prep work done on the mahogany top before you are ready to finish let it sit around if you have the time.
When you let the mahogany sit for about a week or two it will begin to oxidize and turn more toward a reddish brown or brown color depending on how pink the wood was to start.
The longer it sits the better it gets.
You can then use whatever finishing schedule you like on the top.
J.P.
Thanks for the advise all. As for the sink and stove, the stove is on a different area of the kitchen and while i have a bar sink in the island it is in the main counter and not up at the level of the bar. so that should not be and issue unless someone is getting out of hand.
I was kind of hopeing to be able to just oil the thing, and in truth i think i can let it sit about as long as i feel like. It is only a matter of when i will be able to use it it is not like i need to put it in to finish the kitchen, the supports i am using to hold this above the island are such that i can add it after the fact, so i think i may try the let it sit and darken idea. Right now the boards are a nice rich dark color but they still need to be finnished (planed and cut to size) so i imagine that will change.
They are nice looking boards and the guy i bought them from has been selling me wood for years now (about 10 or so i think) and he hand picked these just for this. He went though about 20 diffenent boards he had before he found these three so with luck they will be nice. He knows what i am using them for and knows that i have not used this type of wood so that is why he chose them vs letting me choose (and he did ask my opinion but i dont know much about this wood so...)
I will let you all know how this turns out. In truth i dont think I will do anything with this until mid/late January as i have other things in the house that are more important to finish first.
Once again thanks.
Doug Meyer
You can assume that eventually the mahogany will naturally reach about the color it is now, before you plane off the current surface.
For me mahogany is a fairly formal wood, calling for a film finish and fully filled pores. That means pore filler--which can go over an initial seal coat of finish so that it adds only little color to the surface of the wood, and primarily colors only the pores. Then about half a dozen coats, top and bottom, of a good natural resin varnish. (If you try to put on a thick polyurethane coating it will look hazy and plastic.) Water won't be a problem nor will a spilled drink. The relatively thick film finish would look deep and reminiscent of a real bar, which from the title of the query seems to be at least somewhat in mind.
Doug, which Mahogany are you using?If African (Khaya and similar) it is lightish but does darken/ oxidise naturally but not as much as others.
If it were mine I would use a solvent penetrating stain to darken it more if required, and I would finish it with some sort of durable catalysed lacquer or poly lac not too shiney. I feel that "natural" wood in kitchen conditions soon looks grubby and is harder to keep clean looking: the exception being the butcher block or dedicated chopping board surface. However the Domestic Manager has a say in the matter, you know.
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