Wood for cookware handle?

[Frank Drew]

Anyone have any thoughts on whether or not some woods would be better than others for a replacement cookware handle, in terms of resistance to the amount of heat a saucepan typically would get on top of the stove (not in the oven)? The wood would have to be bored lengthwise for the metal attachment rod then turned to shape so should be reasonably strong grained. It wouldn't go into a dishwasher so extreme water resistance shouldn't be an issue.

Thanks in advance.

[Frank Townend]

Frank, others will chime in, but until they do, you may want to take a look at this: IGNITION AND CHARRING TEMPERATURES OF WOOD (http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplmisc/rpt1464.pdf)


I will say the longest exposure shown in this document was for 1/2 a minute at 430 degrees before it supported fire (burst into flame). I realize you intention isn't to put it into the stove, but there will be conditions that are out of your control, like a high flame on the cooktop.

[Brian Kerley]

I know if you go to the cooking stores around here they have their utensils in primarily 2 woods...bamboo and beech. Really, the temperatures you will be dealing with will not be that high, so pretty much any wood should be sufficient

[Jack Ellis]

You don't say what the handle looks like but if the wooden part is in direct contact with the side of the pan, I'd be very nervous. The metal rod you refer to is going to wick away lots of heat and if it's covered in insulation (wood), there's nowhere for that heat to go. If, on the other hand, there's a piece of exposed metal that connects the rod and the wooden handle to the side of the pan, I think you would be OK so long as the wooden part is protected from any direct contact to flame.

Most consumer grade cookware is made with plastic handles but I suspect the materials that are used have a much higher ignition point than any wood.

[Frank Drew]

Thanks for the link, Frank; there's some useful information there although I agree with Brian that anything that meets the mechanical requirements (drilling then subsequent turning down) will be ok as long as I exercise reasonable care. Unfinished beech is what I'm thinking of at the moment if I can come up with a small piece.

Jack, the pan is a Cousances, kissing cousin to Le Creuset, and has an existing wood handle spaced a bit off of the pan itself; it's made of some stained, non-descript wood.

[Brian Kerley]

Just to put your mind at ease a little more, wooden utensils have been used for thousands of years for cooking. Talk to anyone you know....how many times have wooden spoons gone up in flames while cooking? It doesn't happen. You'll be fine with whatever you use.

[Frank Drew]

You've never seen me cook :eek:!

Actually, I was more interested in the prospective handle's general stability, particularly brittleness and resistance to cracking.

[Jack Ellis]

how many times have wooden spoons gone up in flames while cooking? It doesn't happen

Wooden spoons are for breaking over kids' backsides. :)

What we cook in stove pots doesn't get hotter than the boiling point of water, but the pot itself can get a lot hotter, especially if the pot boils dry, which no one ever does of course. I don't know exactly how hot cooking pots get but the engineer in me was thinking that direct contact with the pot was an iffy proposition.

Of course, if the pot in question originally came with a wooden handle then some other engineer had already figured out things would be fine.

[Brian Kerley]

Well, the engineer in me says that a pot gets a lot hotter than 212F, but when you consider that the heat transfer between the pot and the wood would occur over a very small amount of surface area, and overall, the conductive heat transfer is quite poor between metal and wood, you have nothing to worry about. If you are getting anything hotter than 350 on the stove, you are going to be burning stuff pretty quick (did I mention I also like cooking using my thermometer a lot :D ). Really, wooden spoons aren't going to go up in flames....we've been using em for thousands of years. One other thing is that the moisture content of the wood is probably quite high because it's soaking up liquid from whatever is being cooked, plus the little bit of washing, I'd say that the point at which the wood just goes up in flames is significantly higher than the 430F quoted previously.

Now that I think about it, this could make an interesting set of experiments for Mythbusters :)

[Robert LaPlaca]

If wood was the material of choice, I would use Ipe. Ipe has class A fire rating, same as concrete..

[Steve Kohn]

I had a similar problem on one of my wife's old sauce pans. I went to the shop, cut off a piece of 5/8 dowel rod from the Borg (wood is unknown), drilled a hole down the center and put it on.

That was 10 years ago and we still use the pan, with the homemade handle.

[Frank Drew]

Robert,

Thanks for the ipe suggestion; I've heard of it but never used any, so I'll have to see if I can find a piece, maybe from one of the suppliers selling turning blanks.

[Josiah Bartlett]

If you want to use something more traditional, use the same thing you would use for a chisel or file handle. Ash, Hickory, and White Oak are fairly common.