First slab table, in redwood. Recommendations?

[wkf94025]

My buddies and I put together this redwood slab table just before Christmas.  The redwood was slabbed (top) and milled (frame) maybe 6 months ago, air dried a month or two, then kiln dried for ~6 weeks, then trucked to Colorado and back (long story), then spontaneously became a table, in our first use of the Lucas Mill planer head and sanding head attachments.  Those attachments did a great job, BTW.  Put all this together in a few hours.  Brought the table home just in time for Christmas. The rough stock pinned at low 20's MC% with my cheap pin meter.  So clearly not KD.  For that reason (and lack of time in Santa's workshop) I brought the table home unfinished.  Sanding was 30/60/90/120 pads on the Lucas Mill.  I plan to let it dry at home for months before finishing.  On the frame, we used no glue, for shrinkage/movement reasons.  Screws only.  Easily tightened or re-done entirely with splines and glue. And slab is simply resting on frame, courtesy of gravity.  This project was really just a rapid prototype of Slab Table v1.0.  

With that background, what finish product /method would you recommend?  I am NOT a fan of toxic formulations, so somewhat organic hippy in that regard.  Table will be home to many family meals in front of NFL, MLB, NCAA, and Yellowstone, et al.  Should there be a major spill of red wine or oil before finishing, I'll just haul it back to the shop and take the necessary thickness off with sander and/or planer heads.  And yes, next table will have better heartwood color match between table and legs.  

What [surface] MC% would you wait for before finishing?

Appreciate input from the experts.  Oh, and what about bugs, given the recent thread about sterilizing dining room table?  How small or obvious are PPBs?

EDIT:  one option if bugs are a real risk is I put all this back in the solar kiln and crank for a day or two at 160*F.

[JoshNZ]

For hard wearing surfaces I'd always recommend a poly-chaining finish like polyurethane but it sounds like you are steering away from this. We've just finished a redwood wall in polyurethane and had a heck of a time, I wouldn't recommend it in this case anyway.

You could try tung oil, we use it a lot on kids toys and kitchenware we make/sell. The old timers say one coat per day for a week, one per week for a month, one per month for a year, and every year thereafter. You could take a sip from the can while you're finishing, perfectly food safe. Looks stunning, easy to apply, and eventually does build up a pretty hard wearing finish. Pretty unrealistic you are going to stick to the above schedule but a bunch of coats on it will do well. We ship our stuff with just one or two coats sometimes.

With any drying/penetrating oil you're not going to quite have the protection you have with a poly finish, if you stumble off to bed and knock a glass of purple wine over and don't clean it up until morning it is probably there to stay, to some degree anyway.

[wkf94025]

Thanks Josh.  I will investigate tung oil.  I like the progression of the old timer's schedule.

[blackhawk]

Rubio Monocoat is the big name that is all over YouTube for finishing slabs.  I have not personally used it but have not heard any negative reviews.  It supposedly has super low VOCs.

Does your solar kiln get up to 160F on its own or do you add some type of auxiliary heat source?

[wkf94025]

Without a full load of freshly-milled wood it will hit 160*F in the warm half of the year within hours.  I melted a few things with a runaway empty hot kiln early on.   So in answer to your question, heater(s) would likely be needed in the winter, but if just the table, or a few pieces, during sunnier months I could probably make 160*F daytime on its own.  I have foam panel lids for nighttime preservation, but to hold 160*F overnight would require a space heater or two, I imagine.  In any case, I have no doubt about my ability to hit and hold 160*F, just a question of 1 space heater or 2, and how many kWh to augment the sun.

And now back to our regular programming....