Torched pine question...

[Michael Costa]

Might belong in finishing. Not sure.
I have some pine timbers I want to torch. There are some drying splits in the wood that I did want to fill. Does anyone know the result of torching wood with a wood filler? I'm guessing it wouldn't work and stick out like a sore thumb. Perhaps the natural charm of the splitting should be left alone.

[Wayne Lomman]

Leave it until after burning to see what it looks like then fill or not as desired. Cheers

[Robert Hazelwood]

I'd try it on a piece of scrap, but the most likely result is that the splits get larger when you torch it, and the filler will no longer fill the crack.

[Richard Coers]

It's likely you will have a lot more splits when you are done torching. DO NOT put in filler. It would just fall out anyway from wood movement with the heat.

[Jeff Davies]

""Perhaps the natural charm of the splitting should be left alone."" You got it . You might consider other finishing methods. Oh, wait, isn't Kung-Fu on tonight? oh, man, the fondue cheese pot spilled on my favorite bell bottom jeans . bummer. ;)

[Robert Hazelwood]

FWIW, I did a large entertainment center last year where all of the panels were T&G yellow pine boards that I charred. I did a lot of experimentation. The best charring & finishing method I came up with was to use a MAPP gas torch for the charring. This has a small but very hot flame, and I found it put less total heat into the board than using the large weed burner propane torch. That eliminates a lot of issues with checking, splitting and warping. I also found I could get a very consistent char depth over the whole surface, but the process is very slow. Most of my parts were 3/8" thick and from 1 to 3 feet long, and with the larger torch it was almost impossible to control- all of the test pieces were unusable due to inconsistent char, a big chunk burning off, splits and warping. On a large board like you'd use for house siding, the weed torch would fare better I think.

I always kept a squirt bottle of water in my other hand while charring, to put out any sections that caught fire. After finishing one side of a board, I'd mist the whole side with water and then immediately flip and char the other side. Doing this, I had very little issue with warping even in boards as thin as 3/8". When I only charred one side, or waited any length of time before charring the back side, they would bow quite badly.

To remove the loose char, the best thing I found was a 6" fine (blue) Nyalox wheel on a corded drill. This left no tooling marks and would not remove too much char color, and gave a nice luster. The next best were very fine wire brushes, but these are hard to find locally. The ones you get at the hardware store are pretty aggressive and leave noticeable tooling marks, and you risk removing too much of the char layer in spots.

For finishing I found I liked a plain wax finish best. It had the least amount of darkening of the soft rings (preserving contrast) and with a couple of coats had a remarkable luster. I applied Rennaissance wax with a shoe polish brush, this is the only way to really get wax into the texture.

[Michael Costa]

FWIW, I did a large entertainment center last year where all of the panels were T&G yellow pine boards that I charred. I did a lot of experimentation. The best charring & finishing method I came up with was to use a MAPP gas torch for the charring. This has a small but very hot flame, and I found it put less total heat into the board than using the large weed burner propane torch. That eliminates a lot of issues with checking, splitting and warping. I also found I could get a very consistent char depth over the whole surface, but the process is very slow. Most of my parts were 3/8" thick and from 1 to 3 feet long, and with the larger torch it was almost impossible to control- all of the test pieces were unusable due to inconsistent char, a big chunk burning off, splits and warping. On a large board like you'd use for house siding, the weed torch would fare better I think.

I always kept a squirt bottle of water in my other hand while charring, to put out any sections that caught fire. After finishing one side of a board, I'd mist the whole side with water and then immediately flip and char the other side. Doing this, I had very little issue with warping even in boards as thin as 3/8". When I only charred one side, or waited any length of time before charring the back side, they would bow quite badly.

To remove the loose char, the best thing I found was a 6" fine (blue) Nyalox wheel on a corded drill. This left no tooling marks and would not remove too much char color, and gave a nice luster. The next best were very fine wire brushes, but these are hard to find locally. The ones you get at the hardware store are pretty aggressive and leave noticeable tooling marks, and you risk removing too much of the char layer in spots.

For finishing I found I liked a plain wax finish best. It had the least amount of darkening of the soft rings (preserving contrast) and with a couple of coats had a remarkable luster. I applied Rennaissance wax with a shoe polish brush, this is the only way to really get wax into the texture.

Great info here. I just bought MAPP. I'll use that first using some test runs. I'll come back to this post for the other finishing details. Its info like this that made me a contributor. Thanks!