The tree surgeon has just taken down an old ash in the garden. There are some lovely large rounds and I have a mind to construct some sort of rustic outdoor bench from them. What's my best option for preserving the timber? Are there any ways of treating and preserving the bark on the logs? thanks for any advice tony
Essentially no.
There is a spcialsistt treatment that woodturners use to replace the timber moisture with a stable wax - you soak the log for a year or two, and then it wont crack split and lose its bark.
Apart from that, any log will split radially in a few months and thats that. Bark will slough off as it does.
Paraffin wax is as good as anything. Put a candle in a jam jar with about
75% white spirit, well tighten the lid, and melt in a bucket of hot (but not boiling) water. If you can apply it hot so much the better, but leave it at least 24 hours before applying a 2nd lot.
ISTR its called Peg
Paul Mc Cann
Not all logs will split radially so easily. Some years back I stored 8 ft lengths of hefty oak logs for a period until I had time to convert them and they didn't split overly.
I would be inclined to try and control the drying process, slow it down, which should help ameliorate the worst effects.
Paul Mc Cann
PEG rather - polyethylene glycol? Something like that.
PEG 1000
1000 is the average molecular weight. You'll probably only find this as sold for timber use. Although there are many sources for PEG, most of them are lightweight, a m.w. of 200 or so. These aren't much good for displacing water in timber. They'll avoid some of the cracking, but you'll still get warping._All_ timber rounds over 5" diameter are at significant (i.e. basically guaranteed) risk of radially cracking when dried. Some species, and end-coating, will simply delay the inevitable.
Proof on request (or Google it up from rec.woodworking). It's not a question of stress, but of strain. Timber species are of varying tensile strengths, but they all fail at much the same strain.
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