I had a cutting board made from some nice wood, but which was starting to lose its bright appearance.
A bit of research later, and I get some food-safe mineral oil and wax to restore the surface. Long story short, I was so impressed by how my cutting board came back to life, now I’m looking for any excuse to touch up all the wood in our house. I don’t even mind if I clean the cutting board and wash off some of the wax, because then I have an excuse to apply another layer. There’s something fun about buffing and polishing a surface.
I’m thinking of getting into woodworking just so I can do this more. I don’t even really want to make anything, just apply a bunch of tung oil to a random plank and then wax it to a shine.


I love doing this to random items.
I loathe doing this to the deck outside.
Why is the deck different?
The gratification is not as instant.
Weak initial dopamine hit. It’s a certain fail.
I’ve never conditioned any wood before. Why is the deck not as instant gratification?
It just takes much more work and time to complete the job! Something relatively smaller, like a cutting board, can be done quicker.
I don’t know, sanding it takes days for starters.
I have a friend who was refinishing and sanding his deck.
Between starting and finishing the sanding, his neighbour tore down and installed a whole new deck. He said he had never felt like such a chump.