A long time ago (pre-baby #2), I happened upon a garage sale on the way to my son’s preschool. Once I dropped him off I bought a bunch of nonsense, but the most spectacular buy was this giant bag o’ silverware.
They are from Ecko Eterna line and have seen some better days. You can see all of the finish variation in the bag, but here is a closeup.
Yes, they have been heavily abused in the dishwasher. With nothing to lose I set out to improve on their condition. Here are all the forks before.
You can see the handles varied widely in their finish and it was driving me crazy. Since these aren’t actual wood (like our previous how-to post to revive wood handles) but rather a plastic-like wood substance, I thought a plastic polish would do the trick. And I thought, oh, we’ll just try butcher block oil too just in case.
Have you heard about Jubilee Kitchen Wax? On some vintage blogs I read it is all the rage. Can I tell you a secret? It hasn’t been successful for me yet. I’m not sure what they’re protecting and shining but maybe I’ll hit on a use for it. I tried the Jubilee wax and Novus polish on two spoons. I won’t even bore you with before and after pictures because there was no difference. They looked sort of shiny for awhile, and then half an hour later we were back to the original finish. So I set out with the butcher block oil.
Yes. Success. While this merely puts a food-safe coat on top of the plastic resin, it does even up the shine tremendously. It took quite a long time to dry and I’m sure within time it will wash off. So if you do this at home, leave plenty of airing time and don’t run them back through the dishwasher or you’ll be back in the same predicament!
2 Comments
Did you put these back in the dishwasher or by hand after you used the butcher block oil? I just inherited the same and would like to use them on a daily basis, but don’t want to throw out my old silverware if they all look like that. I have the same issue as well.
Hi Samantha! Sorry for the late reply; we haven’t been very active on the blog! I wash them by hand and the oil seems to be doing ok. If the oil gets really worn you can always recoat. I would worry about the composite cracking as dishwashers are really hard on it. Hope this helps!