meganc731

I'm new to the board, so I'm chiming in late but I wanted to share my experience. I ran across this thread as I was looking for recommendations for a new mat because mine is without a doubt trash now.

I have had two Fiskars mats warp, one because it was left in a car (hubby's fault!!) and had a severe warp, the other used to hang on a peg which always seemed fine but I believe someone set it on the floor and the curve of leaning up against the wall warped it, that time it wasn't bad, but it became worse when hubby (his fault again!!!) put a cup of tea on my mat.

I read a lot of recommendations on how to fix it. I started first with soaking it and weighing down the warps. Then I tried freezing corian cutting boards and covering the entire mat with them. Then I tried heating it with an iron and weighing down while it was still hot. Nothing worked.

I decided to wait until summer and try the glass sandwich method. I took two sheets of glass that were larger than my cutting mats and sandwiched my cutting mat in the middle. I let it sit in the sun all day and after dark once it had cooled I brought it in. It actually worked really well to flatten it, I have only a small ripple on one side. I placed a small ruler on it and everything APPEARED square and accurate. The next day I did the same thing with my other mat. Again great results, I thought. I went to use it for the first time this week and cut a 9 1/2 inch strip. As I was working with it I realized I was 1/8th off. I made sure I was really careful cutting my next 9 1/2 inch strip, but again I was 1/8th off. Finally I realized that when I laid my big ruler on the mat everything looked accurate on one end of the ruler, but there was a gradual difference in measurements as you looked down the ruler. It's as though the mat shrunk overall. Both maths are the same way. I suspect that even in the situations where someone is able to heat just a portion and get the warp out that it might still distort the grid.

Sorry it wasn't a solution, but my advice is not to mess with heat in your experiments. Maybe in the winter you could soak and freeze it flat outside.

Megan

SweatyPie

I would place it in boiling water, then shock it by placing it into a deep freeze, perhaps with a weight on top of it -- a side of beef would be my selection. This will kill bacteria growing on the mat as well.