How to fix a warped cutting board?

I could try sitting on it for you.

[quote]I think it sat in a puddle, but not sure.

Well now, do you thing you could explain that, ma'am?

All things must pass.

I use disposable cutting boards. Too lazy to wash my old one with all of that bacteria seeping into that porous wood.

It’s nearly impossible to fix. The wood naturally wants to warp. This is prevented by drying the wood after being cut in kilns while it’s weighted down to keep it straight.

Soaking it in water allows the wood to swell again, like it is alive. This time, when it dried, it wasn’t weighted down so it warped.

You can try soaking it again and drying it in a very low oven for several days but I seriously doubt you will be able to put enough weight on it to keep it from warping.

You can also have a woodworking shop plane it flat, but that will make the board thinner and likely will cost more than a new one would.

*think

Soak it for a long time and then park your car on it, curved part up.

Frau CUNT problem.

Take your frau CUNT problem to Women's Day.

OP, get over it and buy a new one.

This sounds like pathological hoarding.

[quote]I use disposable cutting boards. Too lazy to wash my old one with all of that bacteria seeping into that porous wood.

R4, what are your disposable boards made of? I'm assuming these are plastic. Aren't they bad for your knives?

R11, I haven't had an issue so far. They're designed not to dull knives. I've been using them for a couple of years.

And yes, I know it's terrible of me to use them because they're not environmentally-friendly:

"Chopping boards hold 200 times more dangerous bacteria than a toilet seat"

Then again, if you eat ass that may not be a big concern.

It just makes it easier so if I only want to cut a couple of tomatoes, I don't have to drag out a giant, wooden board or a even a smaller one. The disposable ones allow you to cut a small piece just for smaller jobs. You determine how much you need.

or even*

Soak the convex side in water, then dry in a low heat oven. The process that warped it in the first place will bend it back. In theory, anyway.

R12 OMG thank you for that link! I never knew such a thing existed. I HATE trying to clean my cutting board!

OP, don't do anything except set the board out under the sun on a warm dry day.

I have a cutting board that look similar to the one in your photo. It occasionally warps. Then, in a few days, it relaxes and becomes fairly flat.

I also have maple counter tops. They also do a bit of swelling in the summer. In the summer, the wood is exposed to drier air and it shrinks.

It's wood. It happens.

[quote] "And yes, I know it's terrible of me to use them because they're not environmentally-friendly...."

Now you've got R17 turned on to the damned things, too. If this product holds up well enough to function as a cutting board, imagine how many hundred years before the fucking thing decomposes in a land fill. If at all.

To hell with you both. Courteously.

On the Amazon listing, some people are saying in the Q&A that they rinse them and recycle.

Disposable chopping boards are bad for the environment.

Wood is good. My board is over 25 years old I bought it in Slovenia. ( No I'm not Melania) sometimes it warps a little. I just wet the wood and a couple of days later it goes back flat. Its one of my most treasured items. It will last another 25 years and will see me out.

I suppose it sounds crazy but for most cutting I just use an old platter. Sometimes I also use a couple of paper plates together, if it's something soft.

Is there a difference between a disposable cutting board and a plastic one?

Nothing you can do, OP. Repurpose it. You cannot unwarp, warped wood.

Cutting boards have to be made of certain wood densities and seals, to last forever.

Source the wood and have someone make the 50 dollar version of this, OP. 👇🏽

Sure, R20. You can put anything into the recycling-- that doesn't mean it's recycled. Especially plastic, ESPECIALLY weird plastic shit like this.

People will lie, lie, lie to themselves to avoid some well-deserved guilt. Ain't a goddamned one of those disposible cutting boards ever been recycled. Of all the lazy ass things to complain about having to wash. A cutting board?

LAAAAAAAZY!

The appeal to me would be lack of germs, not avoiding washing. Still . . .

If you cut it open, the inside is probably teeming with maggots.

Buy a new one.

[quote]Wood is good. My board is over 25 years old I bought it in Slovenia.

You’re supposed to replace your cutting boards every five years.

R13 I don't suffer from this marketing-induced germophobia (which is meant to sell you more products, by the way). Industrial chemicals and compounds in our environment, our water, food, and manufactured products do far more harm to our bodies. I do my best to limit those, but they are impossible to avoid completely. My old wooden (no doubt germy) cutting board is fine. Germs are everywhere, by the way.

r14, Next time you feel that guilt, look at the fact that this 16 million dollar seafront house is situated exactly 1 inch above sea level, yet was still bought only 2 or 3 years ago by a someone who I had believed actually cared about the environment.

Not to mention his Hawaii seafront compound.

R27, get a grip. There are no maggots inside wood....that would mean flies laid eggs inside.

Apologies to r14. I meant to address r12.

Aren't wooden cutting boards something one ought to douse in boiling water after each use and replace at least once every year?

They're not heritage items, OP, unless you are attempting to breed flies in your house.

Yes, too hell with it all, R30! You are so smart. I do want in on this. I may not be able to afford an oceanfront property but I can do my part to make sure every living thing suffers. I'm marching right out my door to club the songbirds and spray the bumblebees. I'm ordering my disposible cutting boards with. Next-Day Air--because I deserve it!

That will show Obama who's boss! I can kill the planet, TOO! I LOVE your reasoning R30. You must have went to college!

^*to

Thank you, R30. Now I'll cut my onions with no tears!

You're welcome, R17

R34, the sun's going to gobble us up eventually.

So DEFENSIVE, r34.

I don't own oceanfront property, r34, so take your griping to Martha's Vineyard or Hawaii, not to me.

Just keep telling yourself that, r31.

I worked with a gal named Kathy who grew up on a farm in PA. She said her father was very proud of the fine wood cutting boards he made and finished by hand. One day he was bragging about them and his friend said, “I’ll bet if we broke the wood on any of them you’d find them crawling with maggots.”

The farmer was indignant and took up the challenge. And when the broke the wood, guess what they found inside?

OP, flip it and use the other side? Just an idea, I use a glass one.

Glass cutting boards are notoriously hard on good knives.

[quote]warped while I wept

Sounds like a new song by Seal.

R41 I don't have good knifes, too dangerous.

I have four small white polypropylene cutting boards, and two medium sized ones. I like these because I can put them in the dishwasher overnight and they come out like new. They’re also easy to store and access in a drawer on my kitchen island, just opposite the dishwasher for fast unloading while my coffee brews in the morning.

These small cutting boards also work great for setting spoons and spatulas onto while cooking on the strove top, like pasta sauce or pan-searing things. They’re also easy on my knives.

One of the medium sized boards has a trough carved along the per8meter, which is great when slicing ripe tomatoes and things like that.

You should post this question on a cutting board board.

Cutting boards are almost as controversial on Data Lounge as post-boiling regimens for pasta.

Put it in the bin and buy a new one, you tight fisted bitch.

Buy a new one. Break up the old one and use for the fireplace.

About 6 months ago, my wooden cutting board warped as well. Ever since then I have been putting it in the dishwasher (which I never did before for fear it would warp). Washing it in the dishwasher hasn't fixed the curve problem, but at least I no longer worry about what bacteria is living on it and in it.

Wooden cutting boards are safer than plastic - e coli and salmonella live LONGER on plastic than on wood. Wood is naturally anti-microbial.

"For a long time, all cutting boards were made of wood. But then the notion came around that plastic cutting boards were easier to clean, so they had to be safer (you can even put some types in your dishwasher).

But, it turns out, research shows that wood cutting boards are actually just as safe—if not safer—to use than plastic. Even though wood is harder to sanitize, and can’t go in the dishwasher, wood is naturally anti-microbial, whereas the gouges and crevices that inevitably happen when you're cutting on a plastic board offer plenty of places for bacteria to hide.

With wood, there are still lots of crevices, but those crevices are deeper, meaning that the bacteria fall in and eventually die—and they don't come into contact with more food. As UC Davis food researcher Dean O. Cliver, Ph.D, explains: "Although the bacteria that have disappeared from the wood surfaces are found alive inside the wood for some time ... they ... can be detected only by splitting or gouging the wood or by forcing water completely through from one surface to the other."

It’s also important to note that the type of wood you use matters. Hardwoods (like this maple cutting board from Boos) are better at resisting bacteria.

“Hardwoods like maple are fine-grained, and the capillary action of those grains pulls down fluid, trapping the bacteria—which are killed off as the board dries after cleaning,” says Ben Chapman, a food safety researcher at NC State.

“Soft woods, like cypress, are less likely to dull the edge of your knife, but also pose a greater food safety risk,” Chapman explains. “That’s because they have larger grains, which allows the wood to split apart more easily, forming grooves where bacteria can thrive.”

If you really want to try salvaging it, I'd accept that it's warped, but take a sander to it. A large sander. I would sand that board (both sides) until you have flat surfaces again.

Obviously, the board has to be thick enough to lose that much surface area.

r44 I like to use them big wooden cutting boards. So much easier to cut up yard animals and road kill for my gumbo!

Get a new chopping board, preferably not made from wood. As someone said above, wood is too porous and can easily trap microorganisms if you’re not fastidious about cleaning.

With wood cutting boards, isn’t it a good idea to apply some sort of conditioner for the wood?

Saw it in two and buy another slabby wood cutting board, you big baby!!

I notice that my white, high density polypropylene cutting boards provide a soft, stable “landing” surface for my sharp knives. The blades never slip as they sometimes did on my hardwood board, and because of that, the polymer boards feel safer. I know that dishwashing detergent is full of harsh chemicals, but I rely on them to properly disinfect my cutting boards, especially when they’ve been in contact with raw poultry.

But this thread is about warping. I would wrap the warped board in a warm damp towel and set it into a vice grip on my tool bench. Mine is large, but if you have a smaller vice grip, ‘sandwich” the wrapped board between two pieces of wood to distribute the forces of the vice grip evenly. Consider periodically reheating the damp towel in a microwave and gradually tighten the vice grip over the course of a few days.

It's a vise grip, R56. I have a synthetic cutting board, too. I prefer it.

r53, I JUST posted evidence exactly to the contrary of what you posted two hours before your posted. Did you bother to read anything upstream of your post?

Just buy a new one.

Why does OP post an obscure frau problem, asking for advice...while in the same post including a link to the solution to his exact obscure "problem"?

I bought a 5 pack of thin vinyl cutting boards at TJ Maxx for $6. I put them in the dishwasher. Bonus, they don’t dull my knives.

I can’t believe some of the comments in this thread it’s infested with uncouth savages.

You should not place wood cutting boards in the dishwasher as this will warp them, instead you need to hand wash using hot water and promptly dry the board.

Using a wood oil will keep it serviceable for a long time.

Olive wood cutting boards are beautiful and the wood is tightly grained. Bamboo is also a great material for cutting boards.

Knives should also be hand washed.

stick it up your mussy, do your kegels and say three Hair Marys

R58 glass cutting boards over wood or plastic.

"biofilm"

Ewwww.

I have a 15 year-old cutting board from Big Lots that has seen all kinds of abuse from being scorched on a hot burner to regular runs through the dishwasher and it is somehow still flat.

If the seam ever cracks, I'll probably fix it with carpenter's glue and vice grips as it has been a good and faithful servant.

OP asks a question yet posts a link to the answers.

The board is not the only thing that is warped, here.

[quote]The board is not the only thing that is warped, here.

Oh, fuck no, hon. This is Data Lounge!

It's easy to keep cutting boards sanitary. It takes three working brain cells, a routine to follow, and a will to live.

R69, with the climate situation being what it is, life is too short to clean bacteria-ridden cutting boards.

I'll stick with my disposables. I want convenience in my old age.

R4 / R70 is killing our planet by burying it in trash, just to assuage his laziness!

R71, if those criticizing buy new phones, televisions or computers every few years or drive a car, they're in no position to speak.

Sure, R72. Whatever you say, hon. So long as you add the word "disposable" in front of each item on your list.