A New-To-Me Wood Preservation Method – Pine Tar

Right here’s the way it appeared proper after I completed making use of the Thompson’s Timber Oil.

However to date, not one of the choices I’ve tried have lasted a couple of yr. After a yr, the end washes away and the boards begin to look extremely dry, grayed, and tough, and the colour is light and uneven.

Right here’s a more in-depth view of simply how unhealthy the boards begin to take care of only one yr. The posts are PVC boards, so they simply get soiled. After a very good wash, they nonetheless look incredible. However the cedar porch boards start to look terrible fairly quick…

In preparation for priming and portray, I’ve, as soon as once more, sanded down my porch to get it prepared for the brand new end. So proper now, it’s trying fairly good once more. All of that previous end is gone, the grey is gone, the roughness is gone, and the cedar boards are trying contemporary and able to be sealed. And whereas I actually wasn’t thrilled about portray them, I figured it was my most suitable choice at this level.

However as usually occurs, I received a number of feedback on earlier posts that made me second guess my resolution to color. I received feedback like this…

“I’d use oil primarily based stain and tung oil end for preserving your lovely cedar wooden. This data is on-line:  Preserving outside cedar with an oil-based stain and tung oil requires combining a penetrating stain for UV colour safety with tung oil to construct a tricky, water resistant seal. This two-step course of deeply penetrates the wooden grain to guard towards harsh climate and decay with out peeling.”

That sounds nice, however I’ve already tried that. Cabot Australian Timber Oil is a mixture of three oils, together with tung oil, mixed with stain. I’ve been there, tried that, and it lasted a yr (if that) earlier than it began trying terrible.

However then I additionally get feedback like this…

“A phrase of warning — After we purchased our home, the deck had simply been painted. We’ve been right here only some years and it appears to be like completely terrible. The paint is peeling off in all places. We’re not trying ahead to the large job of getting the paint all scraped off so we will stain it as an alternative.”

And naturally, that’s at all times the issue with portray wooden for exterior functions. The painted finishes look nice…till they don’t. Wooden likes the breath. It’s at all times increasing and contracting, and much more so when it’s exterior. If you paint wooden with a latex paint, you’re mainly coating the wooden in plastic. That’s nice so long as the coating is in good situation. However the second that end fails at any level, even when it’s only a hairline crack, water goes to seek out its means in there, it can soak into the wooden, after which it gained’t have a option to escape. In order that water stays trapped contained in the wooden underneath that layer of plastic coating, and that results in all types of issues like rotting wooden and peeling paint.

However as I used to be studying and researching the most suitable choice, I got here throughout one thing I had by no means heard of earlier than known as pine tar. Pine tar comes from the trunks of pine timber, and it’s harvested by heating up the wooden by constructing a fireplace round it, which decreases the viscosity of the tar, permitting it to be harvested from the wooden.

If you wish to see the method (on a smalls scale) of pine tar being harvested, I got here throughout this fascinating video of a person harvesting his personal pine tar from which he made not solely a sealer that can be utilized for wooden, but additionally a salve that can be utilized on pores and skin for cuts and scrapes.

Pine tar has been used for millennia for wooden preservation, courting again to the Nordic Iron Age when it was used to guard ships and boats. It has been used to guard wooden buildings just like the Urnes Stave Church, which is Norway’s oldest and most elaborately carved and embellished stave church, constructed round 1130AD.

All of that to say that if it labored for the Vikings, I believe it’ll work for my entrance porch. 😀

As soon as the pine tar is harvested from the timber, it may be thinned down (usually with purified uncooked linseed oil) and painted on with a brush similar to an oil-based stain. It soaks deep into the wooden and supplies a pure UV safety whereas additionally sealing the wooden and defending it towards bugs, rot, water, and many others.

The perfect factor about pine tar is that it’s all pure. solvent-free, and has no petrochemicals in it in any respect, so it’s utterly environmentally pleasant. And once more, it’s been used for millennia particularly as a result of it’s a pure, lengthy lasting wooden preservation methodology.

Pine tar isn’t as common and well-known right here within the U.S. as it’s in different elements of the world like Norway, however there are corporations that promote pine tar within the U.S. (or ship to the U.S.). You don’t get a large colour vary in pine tar such as you get with normal stains that you simply discover on the native huge field shops, however I did discover a ravishing darkish brown that can work completely for my entrance porch and the steps to my workshop. It comes from a company called Earth + Flax. The pine tar is available in a container that appears like this…

And the darkish brown colour appears to be like like this…

So after spending about an hour yesterday studying about pine tar, watching the movies on the Earth + Flax Instagram web page, and studying all about pine tar, I’ve determined to strive it. I’ll be the Guinea pig for all of us, and we’ll see simply how effectively this millennia-old climate preservation methodology works for a central Texas cedar porch.