I’m sorry if this is not in the spirit of the community, but I figured my dad would know because of his experience woodworking, and I don’t want to ask him for obvious reasons. I’m happy to remove it if it doesn’t fit.
I have an aluminum herb grinder, that regularly gets jammed up with resin. I tend to use a regular (probably pine) food skewer to clean it off, because I don’t want metal shards coming off of the aluminum from a metal scraper or plastic pieces from a plastic scraper. The pine works okay, but I have to replace it regularly and it can’t get everything.
I know pine is probably one of the softest woods, but would a hard wood be significantly more durable if it were cut as thin as a skewer (4mm diameter round)? Would anything be both reasonably obtainable (I live in a place with frequently abandoned old furniture, if that would be a good source, or I can go to a lumber store) and more durable enough to be worth it?
If you are using wood food skewers, they are probably bamboo. While not a wood, bamboo is actually really hard. On the Janka hardness scale it rates well above food safe, non-exotic, hardwoods like oak and maple.
Bamboo skewers are cheap, food safe, and available at almost any grocery store. They are one of my go to cleaning tools.
Definitely don’t go with any wood from a piece of furniture or a random piece of wood if you are worried about ingesting tiny bits of the wood. Some species of wood can cause real issues for people due to their oils and some more exotic lumbers are actually toxic. Wood used in furniture? You have no idea what that was finished with or what kind of glue was used.
Thank you! I think the janka scale was exactly what I was looking for :)
Iron Wood
Thank you!
Oak dowels will be 2 to 3 times harder than pine, and more durable because of that. Widely available at any hardware store.
Thank you!
Yes almost any wood is harder than pine. Old furniture tends to be a lot of oak, at least in my country. Here’s what I would do: find any piece of hardwood. You can use furniture but you will probably find it easier to get a small branch off a hardwood tree. Any tree that has leaves instead of needles will be hardwood ( Some wood nerds would object). Whittle a few skewers out of the wood but NOT the pith- Not the dead center of the branch. After it’s whittled it will be dry within a day even if it’s green still. Then I would hold it over a fire/ stove a bit. Don’t burn it, but the heat will toughen the fibers. That’s probably the best bet.
Sorry about your nice post getting vandalized by that shmuck. They’re banned now.
Thanks!
Reeds would be good for something like this, you can usually find dried bamboo pretty cheap at craft stores or in the garden section in spring.
That’s a very good idea, thank you!