Timber finish

[Ole Anderson]

My son is building a new house with interior and exterior timber accent framing. What is the best finish? It is pine and spruce with some pine bead board exterior ceiling in the porch areas. Wooden posts and timber trusses. The rest of the house is stick construction. Planed 6x8 timbers are held with oak dowels. Timber oil? Semi transparent stain? Don’t want a varnish look. Keep it natural with some stain and weather protection. Covered deck and railings and outside stairs are cedar.

jay truss.jpg

[Wayne Lomman]

Cetol. Cheers

[Steve Schoene]

Cetol is good stuff, BUT, for fixed exterior wood I would strongly advise opaque paint, in a light color. A good primer, followed by a coat or two of top of the line exterior paint. Every clear finish will require serious maintenance down the road. Within a few seasons the UV light will have done enough deterioration to the underlying wood that will mean to top coat may lift a bit and the wood will turn grey. Then you are talking removing all the clear finish, sanding the wood, and reapplying top coats. I've done this plenty on my sailboat, but that was on much smaller areas of wood, and it was teak wood to boot. With pine and spruce, wood deterioration doesn't just mean turning silver grey like on teak, it quickly and mean rot and structural issues.

Interior wood can be clear finished quite successfully. Cetol, or even oil/varnish mix will work indoors.

[Ole Anderson]

Thanks, but it looks like Cetol leaves a film finish similar to varnish, and that will be way too much work initially and too much maintenance in the future. Looking at timber oils right now. Stumbled across this one (Land Ark Original Finish) https://www.timbertools.com/Wood-Finishes/ which is a mix of Tung oil, Flaxseed oil, Beeswax, citrus extract and pine rosin with UV inhibitors and mildewcide. Here is another by Woodrich https://www.amazon.com/Timber-Penetr...ustomerReviews This one seems to get great reviews. Get tired of maintenance? Just paint over it.

[Wayne Lomman]

Cetol I have used on fixed external joinery was not a film finish. It's an oil blend and has the most natural look of the architectural finishes I have used over the years. When maintenance is required, clean the spider webs off and go straight over it. No stripping, no peeling, light scuff sand by hand is all it needs. 3-5 years service life. It's not as good as opaque paint but if you want to see the grain, it's about as good as you can get. It's possible you can't get the good versions of it as what I get here has way more UV inhibitors than Northern Hemisphere products.

If the exterior timber is not a durable species, paint will be a better option. I assumed it was durable since that is what regulation require under our building code. Cheers

[Tom M King]

We've been trying various things on docks here, for decades. Docks live in an even worse atmosphere than decks. By far, the longest lasting has been Cetol. It lasts 8 to 10 years, and gradually fades/dissipates away to nothing. I haven't used it in a half dozen years or so, and have not checked to see if they have any newer formulations. The stuff I used last was not low VOC, but extremely High VOC, and thinner than water. It soaks well into dry wood.

[Steve Schoene]

We have been just referring generically to "cetol", but there are quite a few cetol branded products. Certainly the ones I used on sailboat brightwork were not oil finish looking products but were film finishes. I suspect meaningful differences among varieties.

[Tom M King]

Good point. I looked up their line, and this is what we've been using on docks for the past couple of applications, and will use again. I don't remember which color we used, since there is no clear, but it was one of the lighter ones.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sikkens-C...3a&athena=true

[Michael Costa]

I recently bought a couple gallons of cetol from twin creeks log home supply. Due to being a noob, one of the gallon cans was something I didn't need. The woman I talked to was very friendly and sent me a return shipping label so I would only have to pay $11 to ship it back instead of $23. I'm not affiliated with them but recently bought from them and their customer service is great.

[Ole Anderson]

I will look more into Cetol and see what version HD carries.

[Tom M King]

It's very thin, and runny. It's much more liquid than water. Just make sure to protect anything you don't want it dripped on, because using it on something like the woodwork on that porch framing, it will drip, and flip on stuff below regardless of how careful you are.