When my roommate moved out he forgot to take his cutting board with him. I don’t think he’d ever oiled it. I bought my own cutting board, to which I applied food-safe mineral oil. (It was pre-oiled at the factory, but I oiled it anyway.) But I’m still using roomie’s and decided to oil it. It’s really absorbing the oil! I figured it was about ‘done’ and went to put it back into the kitchen. When I picked it up I saw that oil had soaked all the way through. So here’s the question: Have I applied so much oil that it can’t hold any more? Or was it so dry that, while it absorbed a lot of oil, it’s still pourous enough that oil will go right through it? (I should point out that I was becoming a little impatient and… shall we say… ‘more than just wiped it’.)
Wait, I lost track … did you give him a handjob or not?
Yes, I snickered as well. 
Hey, how could I not use a title like that for a thread about seasoning a cutting board?
Best. GQ. Thread. Title. Ever.
Maybe it’s because I live in Thailand. Or maybe it’s because it’s 12:30am here and I’m on my fifth gin and tonic of the evening. But yes, I thought this was sexual in nature.
Ha ha ha… I literally thought about you giving a handjob too… Damn nice title!!
I feel guilty about derailing this, so I’ll try to help get it back on track: I think we’d have to know what kind of wood, how the grain is oriented, etc., to have a chance of getting a GQ-worthy answer.
I can certainly imagine that something like end grain bamboo could possibly just become a really thick filter through which you essentially processed your food-grade mineral oil.
I’ve no idea what brand it is, but it’s similar to this one. So I guess it’s made of some sort of hardwood. The grain is oriented lengthwise.
If the cutting board has been entirely untreated (and cleaned regularly with soap) for several years, the wood itself may have lost a lot of its essential oils. The wood may always be a bit more sievelike when you oil it than a well treated board, or it may recondition itself with time. But I’m gonna go with option two as more likely. I’ve never seen my cutting board leak all the way through after being oiled, and I imagine I would have over-oiled it at one point or another if that was a likely scenario.
Looks like maple to me…that’s what most cutting boards and butcher blocks are made of.
The first few days I wiped the oil on with a paper towel. But it soaked in so quickly that I took to dousing it with the mineral oil and spreading it around with a scrap piece of aluminum. I mean, it was really wet. Maybe I’d just put on so much oil that it couldn’t absorb it all at once and it was leaning through?
You may be wondering why I’m still using this old board instead of the new one. The old one has a lot of cuts in it (not deep, but there) and the new one doesn’t. Although I’ve used the new one for cutting, I’d like to keep it unscarred for as long as I can so I can use it for rolling dough and such.
I had been using olive oil on my maple boards for years, and I never had any problem with randidity. Then some “expert” said I should be using mineral oil. I looked all over town, and found none. I asked my pro chef friend where to get it. He said restaurants are not allowed to use wooden cutting board, except for old, massive butcher blocks, which are grandfathered in. He said, “Go plastic, mon ami.”
Now I have one flexi plastic cutting sheet, one hard plastic cutting board from Queasy Nart. The rest are still wood, wiped with olive oil. Screw the board of health.
I don’'t use any of them for bread dough, though. I went to a cabinet maker, and I bought the piece of countertop they cut out for a double sink. With rubber mesh underneath, it’s perfect for dough kneading. Cheap, too, if you’re needing dough.
In the interest of science, I absolutely doused my cutting board with oil, to the point that my board overfloweth. I cleaned up the oil around the edges, and put the thing on a paper towel. I’ll check it tomorrow morning and see if I can get similar results.
Spreading with a scrap of aluminum, though? Is your kitchen next to a junk yard?
It’s always good to keep an extra cutting board if you don’t have space issues in your kitchen. (I have this vague understanding of everyone in LA living like people in Manhattan do based on what I’ve heard of housing prices out there. I’m sure his is incorrect) It’s always a pain to have to scrub your cutting board between cutting meats and veggies. It’s also nice to have a board you’re not worried about nicking when you’re cleaving apart a bird or something similar.
Louisiana? 
Actually, I moved up near the Canadian border in 2003.
I’ve been doing a little home improvement. (Never had to worry about that in an L.A. apartment!) I cut a threshhold for the exterior door to the little bedroom. The middle bedroom is empty since roomie moved out, so I’ve set up my WorkMate in there. I had the bit of threshhold I cut off in there, and I was oiling the cutting boards in there so they wouldn’t be in the way in the kitchen. The aluminum scrap made a nice little squeegee.
When I get a new cutting board the routine is to use mineral oil to condition it. I wipe it with oil and remove the excess with a paper towel once a day for a week, then once a week for a month, and then once a month for as long as I own it.
Those were the instructions that came with my new one.
Does nobody use paraffin on a cutting board? The guys on furniture on the mend did a spot once where they waxed their roommate’s wood.
That routine is easy to remember. It’s the same way I use my gym membership.
You could’ve gotten it at a drug store. It’s used as a laxative.