Anchor seal and wood cookies

[rastis]

We sliced a massive oak burl stump into wood cookies for a customer last week. He decided he wants to seal all of the end grain on the cookies with anchor seal. I would think this would prevent them from drying in a reasonable time or at all. What is the opinion on this?

[beenthere]

The end grain treatment will not keep them from drying, only dry slower. May or may not help the drying checks that will form.

Probably a good idea to slow down surface checking.

[blackhawk]

It will be hard to stop it from cracking completely.  Another option is to soak them in Pentacryl.  I have never tried it, but I have heard moderate success stories with it.  It is expensive though.

[rastis]

Thanks for the replies. I've used pentacryl on some projects in the past, but these are massive cookies at 48" wide by over 60" long, so soaking probably isn't feasible. I use anchor seal on the end grain of logs we get in that will be slabbed, but never heard of painting cookies with it.