reclaimed heartpine project, suggestions?
I come upon a modest supply of “reclaimed” or “found” roughcut heart pine. The boards had been sitting next to a shed outside for 10+ years and were most likely cut much longer before that (the mill they came from closed 20 years ago)
As expected the wood has nail holes, worm holes, a few termite runs and light decay here and there…. now I just have to figure out what to do with it.
My wife wants a distressed barn-wood trestle table for our kitchen, and has picked one out she found online… the picture is below along with a sketchup rendering I did, I’m sure the one pictured is made from oak then distressed and stained dark… but I’ve got pine, and I know how hard getting pine dark is.
After seeing the wood she likes the natural old grey-brown color and rough sawn texture(though it has become somewhat smoother), but I am worried about having a rough and possibly splintery surface on such a heavily used piece.
I’ve taken one small pice and run it through the planer, the wood is a nice golden yellow with dark orange late growth… just like heart pine floors in a old house, and while I like it… she wants it dark or at least medium brown if the natural patina is shaved off.
If I leave to old patina, my main concern is that some pieces will have to be thickness planed to make the trestles, all of the wood is 6/4 thick and I plan for trestles to be 3/4 with 6/4 footings, I can leave one side untouched but the other side will be bright yellow.
I’ve done a lot of research on using reclaimed lumber but theres not much out there on matching the natural patina. Right now the only way I see to proceed is to plane or sand everything and then try to put the best finish possible finish on the pine.I’ve heard of using Potassium dichromate to chemically darken wood, but I’m not sure if it will work on pine.
I know I sound all over the place, just looking for any advice anyone might have. any books out there on finishing pine? If I had to do it tomorrow, I guess I would light shellac the pine first then build up color with an oil stain, or use one of those store bought tinted polyurethanes, but I’m afraid both would hide the grain too much. I’m also attaching a pic of what I would ideally like the finish to look like if I didn’t keep the patina… I’m sure the table pictured is oak, but I would like the emulate the look.
Thanks in advance
-Blake
Replies
Blake, is there still rain in the forcast for Georgia?? I'm speculating here, but I think if you thicknessed the wood, then put it out in the rain, it would age fairly quickly. Certainly some risk, depending on how much ou have to take off the planks -- the more you take off, and deeper you get into the wood, the more unpredictable the wood will be.
Re: Potassium dichromate -- start a thread with that in the title! There are (or were, anyway) several members who've used it in projects -- pick their brains.
There are chapters in the best finishing books on pine and other blotch-prone woods, but for this specific project, I'd suggest you go to Jeff Jewitt's site (link below) and ask him personally. He's active in his forum there. http://www.homesteadfinishingproducts.com/
Personally, I'd encourage your wife not to get locked onto a dark finish for this wood. It'd be an absolute shame to hide that grain, and the pine tables of yore weren't dark-dark.
Thanks for the link forest girl,
Well I'm not in Georgia anymore, Mississippi, weather is pretty similar though. Leaving the wood out is definatly worth a shot, and I've thought of that, but there was some "newer" wood, 2x4s from lowes that were next to it for about a year, they look somewhat weathered, but nowhere near the nice silvery grey.
I built the interior of a surf-wear shop in savannah a few years ago where we used old tin roofing metal on the walls. About half way through we ran out of the old stuff and had to buy new sheets that were bright and shiny, so we treated them with muratic acid to age them overnight.... I just wish there was a similar treatment for the wood, oter than 10 years in the rain
"I just wish there was a
"I just wish there was a similar treatment for the wood, oter than 10 years in the rain." Chicken p00p. Hah! You laugh!! This may have been hyperbolic bunk, but a friend of mine who spent time in England and is an antiques buff swears that one of the ways they "age" newly built pine items to pass off as antique is to coat 'em with chicken p00p and then set 'em up on the roof to weather. Even if it's not true, it's funny!
The Girl is correct about avoiding a dark shade on pitch pine (as such stuff is known in Blighty). In fact, I can't recall a pine that goes, naturally, the colour of that table you pictured except perhaps after a couple of hundred years accumulation of UV, dirt and the detritus collected by long use. Generally, new wood that's coloured to look old looks like new wood that's been coloured to look old . Aritificial patina may be possible but I can't believe it comes out of a couple of cans.
I've made 5 items from old pitch pine. Only one preserved as much of the old patina as possible - a dark orange with various black streaks where dirt had stuck to the pitch then dried over the 150 years since the stuff was cut. This patina was left on the outside (of a bedding box) whilst the newly-cut surfaces were all to the inside. Even so, it was impossible to hide the fact that the box was made of recently-planked timber as the patina changed at the plank boundaries.
The other items I've made from (old) pitch pine have all started out as a straw-yellow (the early wood) with more orangey stripes (the late wood). It takes a couple of years in natural light for the colours to darken at all. After about 5 years, the difference is still clear but the yellow is begining to redden down significantly towards the orange.
If you look at really old pieces in pitch pine, the colour has often homogenised into a burnt orange - quite dark but still nowhere near the brownish colour of the piece in your pics. It seems to take decades if not centuries for the surface to get that dark naturally.
There might be a finishing expert who knows how to get that homogenised burnt orange artificially early across the yellow/orange stripes of newly cut pitch pine. I've never seen such a piece but maybe there is a lad out there who has a process.
Lataxe
Latax, it might not be what in the UK is called pitch pine (which I seem to recall is Southern Yellow Pine). There's a number of pine species in North America, all of which yielded nice old growth heart wood.
Blake,
Don't count on potassium dichromate to do much on the pine.
I'd try a dye first, followed by an oil stain, to get a darker color.
And finally, I suggest you draw the design out to scale. Unless it is a small table, I fear that a 3/4" thick trestle will appear flimsy. I'd go with the 6/4, and double it up for the feet.
Ray
Actually, that might solve my problems.. .hadnt really thought of that... I could scrorch the cut edges with would help hide the renewed wood.... though I worry how well a rough table top would work.
But I think I have a plan otherwise. I found this articale about alternative colorants http://www.woodworking.org/WC/Garchive01/3_27colorants.html so I'm going to lightly plane a piece to use a finish tester... Here are the finishes i'm going to try:
light shellac + oil stain on top
light shellac + tinted polyurethane on top
light shellac + danish oil
strong tea
strong tea + steel wool/ vinegar
strong coffee
shoe polish
potassium dichromate
water based dye
I think that should cover most of the stuff in that article. I ordered some dichromate and dry dye but it probably wont be here for another week, I'm gonna get to work on these finishes and I'll post pictures when I'm done
I love heart pine. I had a house full of it a while back and made some shutters of heart pine, trying to match the 100 year old heart pine moulding around them. I ultimately used tinted polyurethane to get the dark brown color. I wasn't crazy about it though, it was muddy looking and obscured the grain. I really like your sketch and think it would look terrific (and plenty rustic) in heart pine without any stain or color alteration.
Blake,
Lots of very good advice here. I have had the good fortune to work with heart pine a few times, and it is a real pleasure
My $.02
-the first color "treatment" on heart pine should be BLO/turp(about 20%) on all surfaces. The turp will carry the BLO into the wood and then evaporate, leaving a mellow finish. I would then try to put it in the sun to dry (a few days, no BLO smell). Then a shellac -orange , garnet for color to taste, then de-waxed on all surfaces as a buffer for the topcoat.
-the advice about using 6/4 for the trestles is good, try making a mockup.
-heart pine will gum up your cutting tools and sandpaper. Plan accordingly.
-if your customer (your better half) insists on coloring the pine, I would talk to Jeff Jewitt. His advice is free and very knowledgable
-on a personal note, coloring this wood is really a waste of some of the prettiest wood nature has given us. But, as my better half (who is looking over my shoulder) says, "The customer is always right!"
Enjoy the project!
Pete
PCM,
What is BLO, not sure I've heard of that, and yes my wife is insisting on the dark color... right now. I think I may be able to sway her though... I'm going to put together a case for keeping the natural color once I have all the finishes tested.
I was able to try a few finishes yesterday, but I can't seem to find my camera(i'll post pics when I find it)... but so far my favorite finish has actually been the coffee... I didn't darken the wood alot but once I put some poly on top it really looked good. It seemed to enhance the color..it almost gave it a dark "pumkin pine" look like an older piece of pine furniture. And what was great was it didn't obscure the grain at all.
I really didn't think the coffee was going to do much so I didn't make any up special for it... just used what was left over from breakfast... I'm going to try it again with some really strong stuff and see if that makes a difference.
The tea and vinegar also worked well... gave the wood the weathered look a was originally going for, but have since had to abandon, I decided to run all the wood through the planer and take off just the top. I figured if we really use this as a table it would drive us nuts trying to keep clean. But it will still have a rustic appeal, the wood was rough sawn and some of the saw marks and different dents and holes were deep enough to stay below the planed surface. So Its kind of the best of both worlds, the table will be smooth enough to be functional, yet it will retain some of the rough-sawn character.
Well I found my camera.
Here are my results so far, the test pieces aren't the actual heart pine, they came from the same wood pileso there are some termite runs visible, but weren't roughsawn so I'm guessing they weren't from the same source. Luckily the heartpine escaped much of the insect damage.
-All of the oil stained samples had a shellac washcoat underneath, it took 3 coats on top of just the shellac to get to the "desired" color ( was using minwax english chestnut) but the reverse out of the grain is very evident on the stain+poly, applying a thin coat of tinted poly on top of the stain evened out the early and late wood without obscuring the grain too much.
-The tinted poly alone was pretty poor, just looked like brown paint from 6 feet away
-The coffee+vinegar+poly looked weird, had a greenish cast that didn't come out in the picture.
-The tea+vinegar+poly was similar, but had more of a natural color
-The tea+vinegar+stain is my second favorite, the color is even between early and late wood.
-Tea+vinegar gives a weathered look, would be great if that was what I was still going for
-Coffee+poly is my favorite, just a really nice color, just have to convince my wife of it.
I should have the potassium and dye later this week, so I'm going to give those a go and I'll post them when their done.
Blake,
BLO is boiled linseed oil. Sorry about that!
Try some with real turpentine (not "turpatene" or mineral spirits) on another test piece.
Coffee -real strong- is an interesting idea, I wonder what it's light fastness is (will it fade with time under sunlight). I have tried it, but for that particular piece it didn't give the desired efect.
Be careful of potassium dichromate-it is toxic!! And I'm told aniline dyes can be used to safely reproduce the effect. where did you get it?
Again, enjoy!
Pete
On New Yankee workshop Norm made a table from reclaimed pine and he used a varnish /stain mixture to get the old pine look. On TV it looked great with no blotching. Years ago I made some foot stools and at that time I used a varnish with stain mixed and it came out very old looking.
I too have a large stash of reclaimed heart pine. After running some through the planer, I thought it would be a shame to cover the beauty with some stain. I experimented with some buttonlac shellac which worked very well. The beauty of the grain still showed through but darkened it a little. You might try some samples of planed boards with different finishes on it to show your wife. Who knows; she might like the clear finished look or slightly darker.
My wife wants a distressed barn-wood trestle table for our kitchen.....
Sure wish i had a hord of old hard pine!
Just me but I would take some scrap and just finish with oil or whatever you usually use and show the outcome to you wife. Old pine really looks wonderful with a transparent stain of a light color.
If a dark stain is still wanted you could aways use a tint in your varnish or the water based Gel stains work very well.
But then again I am NOT a expert finisher.
I totally agree, I would like to leave to wood naturally finished, its just depends on my negotiating skills at this point. And thanks PCM, I'm gonna try the Linseed oil... I also got in my Potassium dichromate (got it on ebay, about $20 a pound) and dye, gonna give those a try, and don;t worry, I'm used to handling chemicals, I'll be careful.
Blake - the discussion may have moved on, but have you thought about wire-brushing the weathered timber to get a smoother, less splintery, surface that still retains the character of the found timber?
I've thought about, but not sure how you woulg proceed, would you just use a standard wire brush, kind of like a gril brush, or would you go with power and a wire brush head on an angle grinder? I'm going to have a good bid lift over, So I'll need something to do with it.
I recovered some sawn sarking from a 100 year old local building a few years ago. Sarking is the boards directly beneath the roof iron, so gets hot, cold, dusty, wet if the roof leaks ... and over 100 years develops a lovely golden tan colour. It was rimu, a New Zealand native a bit like cherry. I wanted to use some pieces as decorative inserts in my office desk, but not destroy the original circular saw pattern, nor the patina.
I carefully wire brushed the surface, just with a standard brush and not too hard, and then used a shoe brush to work in some paste wax, then rubbed up with a piece of coarse wool blanket. Looks very nice. Not splintery and rough, but retains all the character and heritage.
but have you thought about wire-brushing the weathered timber to get a smoother, less splintery, surface that still retains the character of the found timber?........
No fight here! I had to comment.
I remember (long ago) wire brushing pine to remove the soft grain away and let the hard grain stay. Nice look, if you like it, but far from a flat surface.
Gee, what am I missing, I reclaimed some 12' rough-cut 2X8's from my house, planing made no difference in the color, they were the same brown/orange color all the way through. Unfortunately, the planks had been use to support a chimney for about a hundred years and after a few months in the lumber rack, they developed big cracks throughout. Probably from relieving the stress.
On the other hand, when we stripped the doors and window trim, we used a quick wipe of Minwax "Colonial Maple" stain to even out the color. It's more brown in color than most maple stains. The new windows, made from old cypress were stained with the same stain and match very well. Just a different grain pattern.
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