Wood to avoid for cutting boards?

[TRITON]

You think? Try putting a piece of planed beech outside for a few months and see what happens.
Aren't butcher's blocks end grain beech? Water never touches them.

Butchers blocks are maple, or sycamore.

Are you suggesting that Butchers don't clean their blocks every day? They scrub them with water and a wire brush!

How to clean a butchers block - This I know, im a time served Butcher of 15 years before retraining in cabinetry.
This is done every night. It's hard going, its not a wipe over, you need to do it for about ten minutes constant
Bucket of super hot water, you wipe all the blood and grease off first, then fling handfuls of sawdust over the top
Then comes the brush, and the wire brush is flat blades rather than wire, and you scrub one way, then the other etc etc. You scrub with the blades flat on, NEVER side on, because you do this once in the apprenticeship and learn a hard lesson. Side on the brush blades catch on the timber and the whole brush flips over and the sharp blades make a nice impression in your wrists
Give it sweep off with a dusting brush to get rid of the scrubbed bits and leave it till the next day. day.
The spacer bit of wood is to keep the blades stiff.

 

[--Tom--]

Bamboo is horrible for knife edges, limited difference between edge and endgrain on edges

 

[Ollie78]

Don't use yew

 

[ArferMo]

Butchers blocks are maple, or sycamore.

How to clean a butchers block - This I know, im a time served Butcher of 15 years before retraining in cabinetry.
This is done every night. It's hard going, its not a wipe over, you need to do it for about ten minutes constant

Nice contribution. My memory dates from the 50s as a child fetching meat for my retired-butcher neighbour next door. "Some meat for Wilkie, please Mister."
As I usually collected said meat after school I would see the end of day clean-up operation. Never saw water used but I did see a heavily saddled bench scraped with something like a Skarsten pull scraper so all the blood contamination was taken away in the scraping. In my recollection the guy worked very hard on it and it was beech end grain, judging by the colour. Maple and sycamore both being whitish, the blocks I remember were more the colour of steamed beech. Perhaps because beech didn't stand up to water and disinfectant they were changed in favour of the wood you suggest?

(Why does this site's text editor complain when I spell neighbour or colour the English way?)

 

[J-G]

Why does this site's text editor complain when I spell neighbour or colour the English Correct way?

My edit

 

[Dr Al]

(Why does this site's text editor complain when I spell neighbour or colour the English way?)

It seems okay to me at the moment. If I write "color" [sic] it complains, but if I write colour it doesn't. It might be to do with the language you've got set up in your web browser. What web browser are you using?

 

[ArferMo]

It seems okay to me at the moment. If What web browser are you using?

Firefox and English(United Kingdom) set as the language. Possibly UBlock Origin preventing some third party scripts loading?

My edit

Well that goes with the rampant Nationalism of the day I suppose. I see the New World's (USA, Australia and NZ) changes to the language as a simplification for the melting-pot of peoples who had to grapple with learning it. Vive La Différence

 

[TRITON]

Nice contribution. My memory dates from the 50s as a child fetching meat for my retired-butcher neighbour next door. "Some meat for Wilkie, please Mister."
As I usually collected said meat after school I would see the end of day clean-up operation. Never saw water used but I did see a heavily saddled bench scraped with something like a Skarsten pull scraper so all the blood contamination was taken away in the scraping. In my recollection the guy worked very hard on it and it was beech end grain, judging by the colour. Maple and sycamore both being whitish, the blocks I remember were more the colour of steamed beech. Perhaps because beech didn't stand up to water and disinfectant they were changed in favour of the wood you suggest?

(Why does this site's text editor complain when I spell neighbour or colour the English way?)

Cool nice its brought back a fond memory.

Beech, though to remember im of the modern era, its more than possible beech was used, though i've only heard of maple/syc used or described as the traditional timber, but as above a tight/close grained timber would be the choice.
I have seen older blocks that were just flat boards, and a good 6 or 8 inch thick, scrubbed down so they undulate every which way. So much like our joinery workbenches, especially the 19th century ones, its just a bench to work on, and nothing more be given to it than that.

 

[--Tom--]

My maple board is the same colour as my beech board
Just about see it below the knives