A little book stand. Walnut. Finished with Rubio monocoat.
What are you making with your milled wood?
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A little book stand. Walnut. Finished with Rubio monocoat.
Looks majestic, Uncle Stash!
This 4ft log was a left over laying on the side of a road since some spring cleaning so I finally stopped and brought it home. Decided to rip it and cut it in half and try some potpourri bowl making. Got 4 bowls out of it, just like a bit more sanding before staining. Does anyone know what kind of tree it would be?
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While my son was home on leave last weekend we built a new picnic table. Milled the wood 2 years ago, its been stashed in the greenhouse waiting for some free time. Needs some sanding and maybe some edge work before staining. Nothing fancy but it should last me a few years.....
Sawyer Rob
Addicted to ArboristSite
What are you making with your milled wood?
Toys for my grandson,
SR
Are you in NJ?
No sir, Arkansas.
Wood is a matter of taste, but since next to no one is a fan of red oak in furniture, I've been wanting to try wood bleaching for awhile on red oak. I saw wood bleached red oak built ins on a website that looked fantastic. I honestly can't even remember if this tree was red or laurel oak, but very similar wood. Deeply flawed, badly dried 3" by 6' slab that warped and cracked so badly I had to take it down to 5/4 in the end and even then the opposing corners tapered off too much to completely level. So I had to try an experiment of routing out the surface on the corners to do a clear tinted resin fill the same color as the crack fill. It's working out well, I partially poured one corner tonight. Plus the top left corner is going to be poured full thickness of tinted epoxy coming out of the crack to maintain the width throughout. Going to be more epoxy in this piece than I typically like to do in order to salvage its full six foot length, but I think it's going to look great.
Anyway, that's just to explain why the slab looks like it does with that routed out lip. My first wood bleaching attempt was a chemical disaster - didn't know what I was doing enough, what solutions/dilutions I was supposed to be using. Used 3 percent hydrogen peroxide and put some lye crystals directly into it because I read it was supposed to be a 50/50 peroxide/lye mix. Boiled over, melted the container, aerosolized the lye, all while I had nothing but chemical gloves on, no respirator even. Applied it anyway, and luckily did myself no damage. Only THEN did I read how dangerous mixing lye crystals into even just water is, much less hydrogen peroxide. Violent reaction of heat. Also supposed to be 35 percent peroxide ordered from chemical supply places, not 3 percent pharmacy stuff. And lye in solution about 1/2 oz to a cup of water. Darkened a lot of the wood badly with the lye overconcentrated and not enough peroxide. Sanded it out back to bare reddish wood in places and ugly lye stained wood in others. Bought 35 percent peroxide and tried it again, mixing very small amounts of lye into water very carefully, before mixing with peroxide. Got it to work fairly perfect, didn't overheat it, but slight bubbling like it is supposed to.
This shows the progress over three coats - ended up just how I wanted it. The first shot is after one coat, still some red left but the worst of the earlier lye staining taken out. One friend suggested maybe I could have just bought the bleach mix from Woodcraft but it costs way too much and it's easy to make yourself once you know what you're doing. Will update once I have the epoxy work done and am closer to completion. I have a thing about only using epoxy in cracks and fills, the vast bulk of the wood will end up oil/wax or water based poly finished. I usually go water based poly on whitish hardwoods to keep them white and not yellow the wood with an oil based finish. There are still a couple of slightly stained spots I'll sand out and touch up with bleaching, where I didn't completely get the resin staining of the wood sanded out where I filled all the small cracks in the wood. (Pith areas of flat sawn red oak never fails to crack enormously on me.) I think I'm going to bleach most of my red oak from here on out, I like it.
Anyway, that's just to explain why the slab looks like it does with that routed out lip. My first wood bleaching attempt was a chemical disaster - didn't know what I was doing enough, what solutions/dilutions I was supposed to be using. Used 3 percent hydrogen peroxide and put some lye crystals directly into it because I read it was supposed to be a 50/50 peroxide/lye mix. Boiled over, melted the container, aerosolized the lye, all while I had nothing but chemical gloves on, no respirator even. Applied it anyway, and luckily did myself no damage. Only THEN did I read how dangerous mixing lye crystals into even just water is, much less hydrogen peroxide. Violent reaction of heat. Also supposed to be 35 percent peroxide ordered from chemical supply places, not 3 percent pharmacy stuff. And lye in solution about 1/2 oz to a cup of water. Darkened a lot of the wood badly with the lye overconcentrated and not enough peroxide. Sanded it out back to bare reddish wood in places and ugly lye stained wood in others. Bought 35 percent peroxide and tried it again, mixing very small amounts of lye into water very carefully, before mixing with peroxide. Got it to work fairly perfect, didn't overheat it, but slight bubbling like it is supposed to.
This shows the progress over three coats - ended up just how I wanted it. The first shot is after one coat, still some red left but the worst of the earlier lye staining taken out. One friend suggested maybe I could have just bought the bleach mix from Woodcraft but it costs way too much and it's easy to make yourself once you know what you're doing. Will update once I have the epoxy work done and am closer to completion. I have a thing about only using epoxy in cracks and fills, the vast bulk of the wood will end up oil/wax or water based poly finished. I usually go water based poly on whitish hardwoods to keep them white and not yellow the wood with an oil based finish. There are still a couple of slightly stained spots I'll sand out and touch up with bleaching, where I didn't completely get the resin staining of the wood sanded out where I filled all the small cracks in the wood. (Pith areas of flat sawn red oak never fails to crack enormously on me.) I think I'm going to bleach most of my red oak from here on out, I like it.
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I'm not a fan of Red Oak or bleaching/staining wood, but good save on the boards. I probably just made firewood out of the - lol. Did you say what your plans are for the boards?
No one is a fan of red oak it seems. Useful for lumber quartersawn but haven't met a woodworker with anything good to say about it, specially flat sawn as slabs. Couple woods bleaching works for me, but in general don't have much use for it. Staining I'll never do. My parents kept their cypress paneling in their house looking light and new for the past 50 years by using some kind of discontinued Cabot bleach stain on it initially, so the cypress never darkened. Red oak benefits from it a lot. Even red cedar/juniper looks nicer and less 1970's-ish when bleached, though I don't do anything with softwoods for the most part so haven't bothered with it. One other wood I might try it on is some longleaf pine salvaged from a 1920's dam locally, that is water stained an ugly greenish brown throughout. Would look a lot better bleached I think.
This red oak slab is going to be a 6' x 30" wide dining table, the other slabs are going to be 4' long coffee tables 23-26" wide, though one may be a desk that is about 5' x 30" and 2+" thick.
Arrghhh... the slow cure resin I'm using takes so long to cure that I went to the store and came home to find a mouse trapped in it. Never have seen a mouse in the garage in six years of living here and the first one I see is stuck in my resin, ruining a perfect pour. The pour on the other end all leaked out through the Tyvek tape earlier and made a huge mess. Not my day.
I think oak is pretty. Especially quartersawn.
Oak is what I made the table in post 46 with. Not typical by any means but the tree was on our property and had some significance.
From a apple tree I cut down little over a month ago
Have a few more to do
Used some of the pine I had milled a few years ago to close in the soffit. After I planed it to 3/4 my wife wanted to keep it for some craft stuff . Umm no I milled it to use it around the house and barn . The wood it’s sitting on is what I started with 
shortys7777
ArboristSite Lurker
I have some ash laying around. Looks like fun. What are you sealing them with?
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