[Sca-cooks] To oil or not to oil?

[Stefan li Rous]

Giano asked:
> My question: The previous owner used these purely for decoration. If
> I plan to
> use them for real, should I oil them before their first use? And if
> so, would linseed oil be acceptable?

I think what you want to use for this would be what is called "salad  
bowl" oil, which is made to oil wooden dishes and not go rancid. The  
oils already in the butter might be all you need for lubrication to  
get the butter out of the mold, but I'm not sure that any butter  
which soaked into the wood, wouldn't become rancid later.

I would suggest looking through this file in the FOOD-UTENSILS  
section of the Florilegium:
wood-utn-care-msg (14K)  3/26/05    Care of utensils made of wood.

This file in the CRAFTS section might also be useful:
wood-finishes-msg (79K)  3/30/01    Period and SCA wood finishes.  
Stains.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****