Proper Treatment Of Slab Wood Before and After

[navigator7]

There is a guy a few miles from my house eking out a living recycling wood. He buys wooden beams in canneries, pulp mills, dairies etcera, pulls all the nails bolts and spike out and re-machines the wood and resells it.

He comes home with blow downs and trees he finds along the way.

I was chatting with him today. I couldn't believe the assortment of wood he has just lying around.
Walnut, maple, apple, willow, poplar, ash, pine, oak, and a few others I couldn't identify.
Slabs of the stuff. Almost all waste.
Chunks, stumps, and curved knees, bits and pieces...some very weathered.

We are friends. Watching him over the years I've seen him pull a snaggly old tree onto the saw and this beautiful stuff comes right out the other end.

He says a lot of what he has will crack, fold and wrinkle up. ( He sells mostly to builders and high end buyers looking for something special. Ironically worm holed damaged recycled wood is the rage at least in the Northwest)

He also said if our area was in Denmark there would be traffic jams of people trying to save what we routine push into a big pile with an excavator and burn.


What does a newbie do with this wood to protect a carving before and after the fact?

[knight_toolworks]

before a good sealing of the endgrain would help a lot.

[navigator7]

Mineral oil?
Tung oil?
Linseed oil?

Sorry...the only wood I've worked with in a long time comes off a truck in the form of 2x4's and so on.

[knight_toolworks]

usually a wax or latex paint. I can't think of the wax product it is waterbased but leaves a great wax seal. but latex paint works well too. you want to do it as soon as you can right after the wood is cut if possible.

[tappsman]

Most woodworking stores sell products to reduce the cracking. I know that Rockler sells a couple of products, one to coat the board and another to coat end grain.

[zeykr]

Anchorseal is the wax product.

[knight_toolworks]

yes Anchorseal I always forget the name even though I had to buy 5 gallons at the time.
you don't want to do the face and sides or it would take forever to dry.