Hiding salt treated 4x4 post

[tmbrcruiser]

I have a customer that wanted to cover the salt treated post on a cabin porch. At first he asked me if he could look through the slab pile to pick out some red cedar slabs that might work. This soon became a lost cause and I suggested we pick some small logs and cut a post from the center. He hasn't come by to pick up the order but I think it should work.

  

[sealark37]

Would it not work just as well to replace the treated 4x4 with a solid ERC post?  The cedar porch post is and was a standard feature in the rural South.     Regards, Clark

[tmbrcruiser]

Just giving the customer what he asked for. 

[Brucer]

I did something like that back in 2004. Customer had leased a store with 4 steel H-columns supporting the main roof beam. The timber-framer I was working with peeled 4 pine logs and marked the middle of the log at each end. I split the logs up the middle, then the framer sawed out a V-shaped groove up each half.

They used a power planer to just touch the face of each cut. Then they set them in place in the store, glued the two halves together, and strapped everything up tight with multiple ratchet straps.

It looked good at first, but the the tops and bottoms started to curl away from each other after a few years. The glue held but it tore the fibres free on one of the halves. The wood moved just the way a timber would if you split it up the middle.

In hind sight, it would have been smart (but tricky) to cut an over-sized V-groove in each half, then resaw each face on the mill to take out the bow in the log halves.

[moosehunter]

I have not heard of "salt treated" wood. Can someone elaborate? 

mh

[Don P]

Wolman salts, Wolmanized lumber, an old trade name for pressure treated lumber. Triolith or tanalith. nowadays with all the chemistry changes and voluntary banning of arsenic for most treated it's more like saying Kleenex rather than facial tissue.

[moosehunter]

Thanks!  I had never heard the term before.