DannyBee (u/DannyBee)

DannyBee commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

wildmXranat · 21 hours ago

I've been using Osmo oils. This top oil and also their butcher block. Besides what they say that it is food safe, would this be fine for utensils which may get exposure to cooking temperatures ? Whether mixing soup or stir fry ?

https://osmo.ca/product/topoil-high-solid/

DannyBee · 20 hours ago

Osmo topoil is actually mostly what it says on the can - wax + oil. The wax part will melt/degrade very quickly at cooking temps. the oil portion will not.

If you are exposing it to cooking temps, and want something very natural, i'd just use an oil and not a "hardwax". The wax part is not going to buy anything.

"hardwax" is just a made up term that means nothing for real, some of them are harder waxes (carnauba), some of them are not. In any case, none of them will survive heat, because the wax won't.

DannyBee commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

giantg2 · 21 hours ago

"Sane folks just use supplied air anyway, rather than risk it at all."

For small one-time projects it's generally fine to just use a brand new filter and toss it afterwards. Hobbyists painting a car panel aren't using supplied air.

DannyBee · 20 hours ago

Sure, i meant if you are doing work repeatedly.

People often put the cartridges in a plastic (or sometimes mylar if they are advanced) bag to save money, and change them when they can smell stuff. This is a bad plan with isocyanate.

Auto finishes are moving towards iso-free 2k urethanes anyway. (wood will get there, but tends to lag)

DannyBee commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

energy123 · a day ago

What if you're using it as a serving spoon from a boiling dish? How much heat can it withstand (or for how long) before it's unsafe

DannyBee · a day ago

Depends wildly on the finish. For boiling, i just wouldn't worry.

Most of the toxic fumes/etc come from breaking molecular bonds. There is a minimum temperature, and below that temperature, it just doesn't really occur.

If it starts happening, regardless of whether there is visible smoke/vapor, the finish will quite obviously visibly degrade. Either it will flake off, slough off, or you will just be able to remove it with your fingernail.

Take polyurethanes - they mostly start releasing toxic fumes at 300-400F just about the second they get to that temperature. Below that, nothing.

This is because that's the temperature at which the isocyanate bonds start to break, even if there is no flame. You will not see smoke or vapor. But it will become essentially non-protective and flake off or otherwise visibly degrade.

At a much higher temperature (700-800F) you would break down the polyol, which point it will likely flat out ignite, and burn with a very thick, toxic smoke. People used to actually think polyurethane foam was non-flammable. It's highly flammable. It just has a high ignition temperature. In houses, you are now required to cover it with some form of fire barrier or otherwise meet E-84 criteria through additives, etc.

We don't worry too much about this for wood pieces, because the only time they are exposed to this level of heat is when something is already on fire :)

Also keep in mind that things that are called polyurethanes may or may not actually be polyurethanes.

There is the "colloquial" name that you often find for a finish in marketing literature, and then the actual chemistrsy.

A good example is water-based lacquers, which are usually just acrylic resins.

Most polyurethanes are actually polyurethanes of some sort. Everything else is often a wacky mix.

DannyBee commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

clickety_clack · a day ago

That is a terrible assumption to make. Regular lacquer for example does poorly under temperatures commonly encountered when preparing food and it’s basically a mix of solvents.

DannyBee · a day ago

It's not a terrible assumption - it's a requirement to sell a wood finish in the US/Europe.

Under temperature, sure, they differ a bunch. But in terms of food prep, no, they are all non-toxic and edible once cured.

DannyBee commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

userbinator · a day ago

Some recommend non-edible petrol-based mineral oil (aka liquid parrafin) because it doesn’t go rancid, but has the same effect of not actually doing much for protection and will leak into hot liquids.

Highly-refined mineral oil is food-safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil#Food_preparation

Why even use wood if you’re going to cover it in a layer of clear plastic?

I find it amusing that those who will use wood or "natural" (petroleum is also naturally occurring...) products for some sort of weird misguided eco-virtue-signaling, inevitably end up needing to basically reinvent the chemistry of finding an inert, durable material that brought us modern plastics. All these drying oils create a layer of polymerised material, which can be classed as plastic anyway. Waxes, regardless of source, attribute their properties to long hydrocarbon chains, just like polyethylene.

DannyBee · a day ago

100% - this sort of insanity is just silly.

DannyBee commented on Developing a food-safe finish for my wooden spoons alinpanaitiu.com/blog/dev... · Posted by u/alin23

DannyBee · a day ago

Woodworker and person who has spent a tremendous amount of time on wood finishing chemistry here.

This is very confused.

First, all wood finishes you can buy are food-safe once cured. They aren't allowed to be sold otherwise, at least in the US/Europe/et al.

If you are using them once heated, this is not always as true (and regulations vary a bit), but if we are talking about food prep/salad/you name it, they are all safe.

Heat wise, if we are talking about using it in boiling water to stir something, most finishes would be fine from a safety standpoint (not all can withstand this though).

As a general rule of thumb, if you aren't heating the wood above 200F, you aren't really going to get a finishes to release toxic fumes[1]

Second, as for solvents - smell is not everything. The HDI he mentions rubio having will not smell like anything until the concentration is way way way way too high. If you can smell it, you are in trouble. HDI is also much more dangerous than most solvents[2].

The oil is also a solvent.

Solvents are just things that you can dissolve something else in.

If they want to avoid certain types of solvents for some reason, that should be about safety or something, and if they want to evaluate that, smell is probably the wrong evaluation criteria.

To give one example of solvent elimination with a purpose, let's take VOC's, which are about pollution[3].

Avoiding VOC solvents makes for cleaner air, but again, VOC compliant/exempt/etc solvents vary wildly in whether they are safer for people or not than non-VOC exempt solvents.

If you are trying instead to avoid human-toxic solvents, you would choose a different set, etc.

[1] There are so many finishes with so many different properties that i can't 100% guarantee this, but non-professional stuff you can buy at a woodworking store or a big box store is going to be fine

[2] The lack of smell of isocyanate's is main the reason you can get service life indicating respirator catridges from 3m/et al - otherwise you would not be able to determine if your cartridge is working or not, since you would not smell it when spray finishing/etc until the concentration is way too high, even if your cartridge is spent. Sane folks just use supplied air anyway, rather than risk it at all.

[3] not safety to humans, though often highly confused with being safer.

DannyBee commented on Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence whitehouse.gov/presidenti... · Posted by u/andsoitis

petcat · 2 days ago

It could have some teeth considering that the whole point is the executive office is going to establish a task force that investigates state laws in opposition of this federal deregulation of AI. Any states deemed to be out of sync will have certain kinds of federal funding cut from them.

There are a lot of states, and especially state universities, that will not like that.

DannyBee · 2 days ago

The Executive can't actually cut approriated federal funding, since budgets are congress's job.

The executive, in fact, must spend money that congress appropriates. Unless it is illegal/et al to do so, or the funding otherwise allows prseidential discretion, they are required to do so.

Yes, they did some EO's purporting to cut funding. None that related to non-discretionary funding have been upheld, even by "trump" judges, and so far all non-discretionary (IE explicitly directed by congress) funding cut has been restored, AFAIK. All are a wildly clear violation of separation of powers, and so far no judge has disagreed.

(Though don't confuse whether they have to spend the money the way congress directs with whether they can or can't fire federal employees, etc)

There is a path to the president impounding appropriated money through the impoundment control act, but they haven't done it or followed the process so far.

DannyBee commented on Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence whitehouse.gov/presidenti... · Posted by u/andsoitis

DannyBee · 2 days ago

Any company dumb enough to try to use this to ignore actual state law will get what they deserve. No state court will give them a pass when they claim an EO has any force of law or that it was reasonable to rely on it.

Even given the current state of things (I’m a lawyer, so well aware) I would put money on this

DannyBee commented on Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence whitehouse.gov/presidenti... · Posted by u/andsoitis

ETH_start · 3 days ago

Very welcome order to prevent the anti-AI movement from stymieing the development of AI in the U.S.

DannyBee · 2 days ago

Except it does literally nothing since EO can’t preempt state law

DannyBee commented on Why Startups Die techfounderstack.com/p/wh... · Posted by u/makle

hnhg · 4 days ago

There is obvious survivorship bias in the analysis throughout this article. You could reframe it as startups that succeed done have these problems - well, duh! Edit: actually the more i go through it, it sounds like chatgpt prose, especially by the end.

DannyBee · 4 days ago

It also provides literally no data to back up the assertions.

Just more bare assertions.

You could easily write the exact opposite article (ie “exactly as people believe, most startups run out of money well before they give up internally” or whatever) and it would sound exactly as true