Not another finishing question!

My question has little to do with what finish to use, but when? I have read all the finishing threads
over the past thee years and I’m still not convinced to put a finish on them at all. Are these timbers
that are having a finish applied to them green or seasoned?
I am a little uneasy about applying a finish to a green timber and risk trapping moisture in the wood
to start the decaying process. Rotting from the inside out is not cool!
I know it looks nice and helps reduce checking but are these breathable finishes?
I am in the middle of cutting a 1300 sq/ft square rule, hand planed, Dutch frame addition to my own house.
So I have some time to kick this around. I will post some pictures when things progress a little further.

Regards.
Karl Hines

Does anyone out there have any first-hand experience with a green timber rotting because of the finish? So far, it seems all we have is conjecture and theoretical possibility. CB.

There are breathable finishes or oils that won't trap moisture in..

If you're going to apply a finish, I think the best time is right after you plane, which should be right before raising unless you want the wood get a tan.

I like tanned wood. Tim

"conjecture and theoretical possibility" True enough, but derived from what I've seen by trapping moisture in all most any piece of wood. I'm not knocking what any body does or has done I was curious if any body else has give it any thought.
I think the paint is the only thing left holding up my 2x6 fence (existing when I bought the place). I'm sure many of you have seen plenty of siding you could poke your finger thru.
In part it's the same reason you don't put shingles down on a wet deck, a side from not wanting to blister the asphalt shingles.
Mark. The tanning is ok but the tan lines from the stickers I might not like. Planning before raising is a good Idea but I don't want to handle some of these timbers any more than have to. I've got all I can do to roll a round a 8"x14"x20" timber by my self.
I think a breathable oil finish is the way I will go after the frame is up and enclosed for a while.

Karl Hines

Ok, I agree we need to oil our timbers, my question is when in the construction process. I put up a small frame 3 days after oiling the timbers with Land Ark last summer. The oil looked beautiful, but all of the foot and hand prints and strap marks did not. I soon realized that you cannot sand these imperfections out after the timbers are oiled. So here is my question...is it a better idea to put the frame up first, then do touch up sanding and then oil? Maybe just oil rafters and timbers hard to get to before the raising? What do you professionals think?

I only oil if they twist my arm realy hard. Tim

Wash your hands and clean your boots, Scoots

I'm going with Mark on the stain right after plane plan (I'm a freekin' poet today...!) The planed wood will take the stain nicely, better than sanded wood.
But let the stain sit for longer than just a few days - give it at least a week. Longer if it's oil. You'll find that prints will wipe off better without taking all the stain with it.

As for rotting from the inside out...unless you're wrapping the timbers with cellophane, I don't think that it's an issue. Hell, my mother has a gnarly old tree trunk coated with about an inch of varnish (70's hippy wanna-be art) and it's not rotted yet, unfortunately....

That's my point, TG. I don't think a thin coat of varnish is going to seal a timber so well that it rots. Between the huge surface area of the timber and the checks, I just don't see it.

What are we hoping to accomplish with an oil finish? Are we protecting the timbers? From what? How long will it last until it dries up and needs to be reapplied? And then how much fun will it be to reapply to the inside of a finished house? CB.

I would love to hear about this topic from someone who lives in a timber frame house. I have built one timber frame that I will live in and I am currently going through the painful process of redoing the finish. Buried somewhere in this forum is a post of mine on this topic, so I won't go into all of the same details. To summarize,

I think linseed oil (boiled, raw, or otherwise) is a pretty crappy finish. I have little experience with other "oils" but I speculate they too have some of the downsides of linseed oil, so I am suspect of recommendations of other oils as permanent solutions. Linseed oil offers some level of protection against weather, but it accumulates (magnifies and attracts!) nasty fingerprints and black weathering streaks if the frame is exposed for very long. It would make a pretty lousy finish for a house that you plan to live in. You would not be able to keep it clean... especially with kids in the house.

Polyurethane looks awesome and is incredibly durable. It can be kept clean. If it works on flooring, it will definitely work on timbers. We are sanding most of the linseed oil off of our timbers and applying polyurethane. It doesn't look too bad where we only do a partial sanding before recovering with polyurethane, but it can look splotchy. In some places it is necessary to remove all of the linseed oil to get all of the stain off. But it is not feasible to sand every bit of linseed oil off the entire timber. I'm hoping the splotches will fade. If not, I can live with them, because the timbers look great with poly on them. If you had clean, oiled timbers, you could go over them with polyurethane w/o first sanding. A few of our timbers were clean and we did just that.

The notion that my timbers will rot from the polyurethane is ludicrous. (your mileage may vary - yes, I've planed timbers that have water coming to the surface, and I wouldn't want to try and seal those timbers at that point. if nothing else, the finish would not adhere well!) Our timbers are on average 3 years old and partially (but not completely) seasoned. They have so many deep checks in their surface, that you could not effectively seal them if you tried.

If I had it to do over, I don't know for sure what I would do. I would certainly try to permanently enclose the frame sooner. If you thought you could reasonably raise the frame and dry it in within 2 weeks, I would use nothing at all on the timbers... then clean them and polyurethane them once they start checking (6-12 months depending on their initial state?). For prolonged raisings, there seems to be no good answer to a question that badly needs answered.

I haven't been haunting these forums (and probably missed out on a lot of great discussions!) because I've moved on to finishing the house, with the timber framing becoming a cloudy memory. Mostly, I'm doing stonework these days, and my wife is refinishing the timbers. We think we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I'm still actively updating my timberframe blog because there seems to be even less information on how to complete a timber frame than there is on how to raise one!

There was a heck of an interesting article on shellac in this months issue of Woodenboat.

The article talked about getting dried flakes and then using denatured alcohol to get it to the desired thickness--ie. very thick for using as a bedding compound, medium thick as an adhesive, and thinner for a finish.

I doubt many (if any) folks are using shellac on a frame, but I'd recommend checking out the article for other uses.