Wooden masher

These wooden mashers come in two different sizes. The smaller one is 31 cm long with a diameter of 5.5 cm and the larger one is 36 cm long with a diameter of 6.5 cm.

The mashers are made in a small woodshop in Southern Finland. They are turned on a lathe from one piece of birch wood, of individual trees close to the woodshop that were cut down for one reason or the other. Their surface is untreated apart from having been sanded three times. Between sanding, their surface was moistened with water and allowed to dry. The wood swells with moisture and the grain rises when it dries again, giving the surface a rough feel. Repeated treatments remove the roughness and result in a very smooth surface. The last sanding is always carried out with the soft wood shavings from turning.

The wooden mashers can be used for mashing, for example, potatoes (mashed potatoes), berries and cabbage (production of sauerkraut or pickled cabbage).