Problem with kuksa

[Janne]

Yes it is nice. But Linseed oil, from a pressing no more than a year ago, is nice too. The stuff used to treat furniture is stale. Go to Waitrose and buy a bottle Organic LSO and try.

I had to check online, and several makers in Sweden do NOT treat the inside.

 

[Herbalist1]

Most oil finishes are not going to be good on an item you use with hot liquids - you're going to get nasty oily drinks. Maybe Tung oil if it's properly cured.
Baked oil finish as RV suggests will work well. Also boiling the item in milk. The casein in the milk denatures, sealing the pores. After boiling in milk, you rinse the item so you are not leaving milk on/in the item to go rancid. You are effectively just sealing the pores/surface with casein 'glue'.

 

[Janne]

According to several kasa makers' websites, they boil the wood in salt and sugary water before carving ( prevents splitting) then use oil with or without birch tar stain, on the outside ONLY.
No treatment on the inside.

Birch burls are dense.

 

[Monikieman]

Yes it is nice. But Linseed oil, from a pressing no more than a year ago, is nice too. The stuff used to treat furniture is stale. Go to Waitrose and buy a bottle Organic LSO and try.

I had to check online, and several makers in Sweden do NOT treat the inside.

that's interesting, thanks. It also explains a lot

 

[Samon]

The sad thing about old school fancy stuff like those wooden cups is they are inherently out dated and not practical. I'm sure you like your cup but if it tastes like greasy old stank oil then the fault obviously lies in the base design. (hence us developing glass, ceramic and steel cups)

Just like animal horn cups, pewter mugs and even those funny rubber foldable cups. They all taste gross. Added with the fact the wooden cups need oil to seal the grain to stop mold growing is just another reason why they taste like 'shoot'. Linseed oil stinks, all my tools stink of it and it makes me feel sick lol.

(I must be getting tired of sealing wood. I hate the smell of bees wax, I hate the smell of linseed oil, teak oil, tung oil etc. All of them remind me of my old work shop which was like the size of a concrete caravan bathroom, tiny and suffocatingly riddled with the stench of oil and wax.)




Regarding getting your cup usable, I can only assume an alchohol fluid gently applied all over and wiped out, repeating that process over a few days to take out the oily coating. After that? no idea.. try parrafin wax? (that's just normal white candle wax)

 

[Janne]

Wooden cups do not need to be oiled to seal them. I am sure you have kitchen utensils made from wood that are unsealed and fully functional?

 

[Samon]

Usually they are pressure treated like fence panels and not made of porous burl, just beech. Or so I'm told.

But then again I'm not a professional utensil or receptacle maker..

 

[Janne]

I hope yours are not pressure treated in the same bath as fence panels!!


Most of my spatulas and cooking spoons are wood. Birch, beech, juniper.
No treatment.
Also heat treated bamboo. But being from China and/or Vietnam, I do not know about the radioactive, toxic or other health improving chemicals they use.


No need to treat a wooden cup that will be exposed to Coffee, Tea or water. Or those same with a drop of alcohol added.

 

[Robson Valley]

So called "pressure treatment" is a vacuum impregnation method which approximates the Charles' Law oven heating treatment, but at room temperature.
Power poles and fence posts, all the same here. The oven thing you can do in your kitchen. However, the heating runs the risk of cracking.
I would not think that's an issue with the twisted grain of burl.

I only carved 70 spoons and 30 forks in birch and not a single one cracked at 325F.
Beautifully clear & straight-grained, a joy to carve.

Birch is hardly porous in this application. Nearly ideal, actually.
The vessel elements are elongate, narrow, with scalariform (Type IV) end plates.

I think I'll stain the inside of my (planning stage) kuksa with espresso coffee.

 

[Janne]

I think I'll stain the inside of my (planning stage) kuksa with espresso coffee.

Yes. A nice Triple Espresso can bring us older dogs back to life.....

It will be interesting how the birch stains.

 

[Robson Valley]

Getting me going in the mornings is about the same as trying to light a fire in wet wood.
I'm just past the smoldering stage today.
I'll buy locally roasted coffee and grind for espresso.
I'll have to do a glue-up for the kuksa, still pondering the grain direction to show it off.

 

[Janne]

If you have a piece with a knot that belonged to a living branch, it makes for interesting look, where the growth rings go in different directions. Can be a pig to carve. I am now doing a handle for a rat tail blade where I am using a knot as a visual interesting point.

Has to be a living branch knot, not a dead, dark brown one.

Maybe you could make the join in horizontal level, maybe using a different wood?

 

[Robson Valley]

Unless I can find somebody with fresh firewood, not too legal to whack a big birch
and even worse to save only a chunk from the crown with a branch. Not in my valley.

I figure that I will whip one up from Western Red Cedar first. A prototype to gain a sense of design and techniques. Carved lots of dishes in WRC.
Same again, some years back, to explore size and shape for PacNW native style crooked carving knife handles.
Then, glue up some birch chunks. Birch dishes look nice.
Took a look at my stash of apple and alder logs but I think they split beyond saving for the smoker BBQ.
No appetite to use mahogany.

Will be fun to explore a little bit of history and tradition. I can oil-bake the outside and leave the inside raw, no big deal.

Trivia: some years back, a Uni engineering prof-type went to the trouble of working out the true energy and environmental cost
of different kinds of coffee cups. Wish I'd kept a reference. I do remember that styrofoam was the least expensive.
A ceramic coffee mug/cup? YOu have to wash and dry that cup more than 350 times to bring the total impact cost down.
Wood was in the middle, better than metal.

 

[Laurentius]

The sad thing about old school fancy stuff like those wooden cups is they are inherently out dated and not practical. I'm sure you like your cup but if it tastes like greasy old stank oil then the fault obviously lies in the base design. (hence us developing glass, ceramic and steel cups)

Just like animal horn cups, pewter mugs and even those funny rubber foldable cups. They all taste gross. Added with the fact the wooden cups need oil to seal the grain to stop mold growing is just another reason why they taste like 'shoot'. Linseed oil stinks, all my tools stink of it and it makes me feel sick lol.

(I must be getting tired of sealing wood. I hate the smell of bees wax, I hate the smell of linseed oil, teak oil, tung oil etc. All of them remind me of my old work shop which was like the size of a concrete caravan bathroom, tiny and suffocatingly riddled with the stench of oil and wax.)

Regarding getting your cup usable, I can only assume an alchohol fluid gently applied all over and wiped out, repeating that process over a few days to take out the oily coating. After that? no idea.. try parrafin wax? (that's just normal white candle wax)

Just drink out of a pure silver chalice, you can't go wrong, mind you to do it the proper bushcraft way you would have to mine your own silver ore first. As for those folding rubber cups, yeah gross.

 

[Janne]

One of the most environment friendly way is to take a glass bottle you can not get a refund for, cut it down to a cup and make a handle from metal wire. Do not forget to notch the sides to hold the wire in place.

Styrofoam? The World's largest producer of Styrofoam stuff, Mr Dart ( Dart Container Corp) lives here. Huge investor. King of Grand Cayman.

 

[2trapper]

Ok, just an upate .After several boiling treatments and three days to dry the kuksa is now perfectly usable, with no residual taste. Thanks a lot for everyone of you

 

[2trapper]

Another update. The kuksa has no longer its layer of oil and if you leave liquids for quite a long (minutes) the wood becomes soaked and the external surface stains with the liquid. Any ideas? Just a little film of oil outside the kuksa to prevent it?

 

[Janne]

Leave it. Character.
Traditionally kåsas were used to drink only a few things from. Coffee. Vodka. Water.
So not much risk of flavour transfer.

 

[crosslandkelly]

Have you tried boiling it in milk?

 

[2trapper]

Leave it. Character.
Traditionally kåsas were used to drink only a few things from. Coffee. Vodka. Water.
So not much risk of flavour transfer.

Thanks a lot. Probably I'll try only with these. The oily film of coffee could be of help and water is not a problem for stains. Vodka, too strong for me!

Have you tried boiling it in milk?

I think I'll avoid it for avoiding the wood gets rancid