Table top finish?

[customsawyer]

I have some customers that really like some interesting pine. Some of these logs would have went to the burn pile 5 years ago but now they get sawed 9/4, dried and planed. You have to be careful picking them up as they are so far gone the corners can break off. In short the sap wood is rotted. It firms up in the drying process but is very brittle and full of bug holes. I'm looking for recommendations as to what they should finish them with. One thing is to fill all of the bug holes with out air bubbles and the second that might add some strength to the brittle wood on the edges. One of my regular customers is putting a piece of plywood under them for added strength and then several layers of flooring poly. He said the flooring poly can take a lot of abuse and unlike epoxy if you get a problem area you don't have to strip the whole thing and start over. Any other products or better finishes out there?

[DWyatt]

I have had good luck using the Total Boat Penetrating Epoxy. If my memory serves me right, it allows you to thin it 1:1 with denatured alcohol or some equivalent to get better penetration. Just keep adding coats, pouring and squeegeeing the epoxy around until it no longer soaks in. Then I sand and proceed with my normal finish, I prefer Pre-Cat Lacquer.  

[Larry]

I don't think its good practice to leave rotted wood in a table top but I do it sometimes in wall art pieces.  With your client backing it up with plywood it might work ok.

For bug holes I use Starbond CA.  Fill the hole and spray with accelerator, ready to sand/finish in 30 seconds.






To make punky wood hard, I use either thin CA or Total Boat penetrating epoxy.  The CA works well, but might be too expensive for large areas.  The penetrating epoxy takes forever to cure and sometimes gives me trouble during finishing.  Both make wood harder but don't add much actual strength.






Lacquer sanding sealer can also make the wood harder, but doesn't add any strength at all. 

For finish I sometimes use wipe on poly but much prefer the high end oil finishes for the ability to repair and looks. 


 

[Larry]

I forgot.  You can make epoxy penetrate punky wood much better by heating the wood with a hot air gun (hair dryer) as you pour the epoxy.  It also speeds the cure.  I think it beats trying to thin the epoxy.

[Old Greenhorn]

I had a client about a year and a half ago just like yours. They spied a pithy junky white oak cookie in my shop I had been using for a 'dump' for my excess epoxy. they just 'had to have' a table made from it. I tried like the dickens to talk them out of it and even threw out an "I don't wanna do it" price, but they had to have it. I did a full epoxy pour, actually about 30 different pours to hit all the different angles and edges, then finished up with a full float over the top to leve is out. One flare had a 3/4" drop I had to make up. This thing was SO punky that one flare broke off while I was just liftin git. I can see the crack in the photo, but you likely cannot. I started out by filling all the bug holes and poking out each bubble with a tooth pick, and worked up from there. I have the details in a thread somewhere. I finished it up with 3 nice pieces of Ash underneath for support straps, then the legs screwed to those. They were very happy and have a (stupid) expense piece of artwork/sculpture displayed on it in their home. Turns out my "I don't wanna do it price" was not quite high enough, but I was very pleased with how it came out. In a city market it would have been easily a $1,500. table. Still junk to my eye, but very pretty to many folks.

[TWG]

I have also used the total boat penetrating epoxy and diluted it on some rotten weeping willow. It is now a beautiful piece of wall art.  I have also used it on some very spalted sycamore. 

[GeneWengert-WoodDoc]

I agree with your neighbor.  There are many good coatings with flooring coatings being really good.  Just remember to do top and bottom the same I order to avoid most Earp.

If it were mine, I might put on six coatings of Briwax for interior use.

[customsawyer]

Thanks guys. All good information.