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Thread: Finish for a firewood box?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Oct 2017
    Location
    Santa Cruz, CA
    Posts
    32

    Finish for a firewood box?

    I built a box to hold firewood next to the fireplace, so it will get abuse. It's made out of plywood and not overly fancy, but I don't know much about finishes yet and I'm not sure what is something that would work well for an application like this.

    For your amusement I am attaching a photo -- I did this as one of my projects this semester in community college, so I did a design, made a 3d printed model, then a wood model (for the general joinery idea) and the real thing -- which I still need to make feet for, but that's another problem for another day! I know, it's funny to do that much work for something I put together much faster than anything else I did in class!

    firebox.JPG

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Fairbanks AK
    Posts
    1,566
    I would suggest/ want unfinished bare wood in the inside. My woodstove has one of those platinum catalytic combustors in it. I will not be going backwards, the new stove is dramatically more efficient. But the combustor can be poisoned by things like paint chips. Some areas have laws about what you can burn in a stove for air quality reasons too, paint chips and painted wood are usually illegal if there is a law in whatever jurisdiction.

    I would be tempted to stain the exterior of the box to complement my living room and then just a wax on the exterior. Something low maintenance but easily repaired. You could do danish oil on the outside. I have been fooling with hemp oil and wax.

    Got some scraps to experiment on?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2017
    Location
    Santa Cruz, CA
    Posts
    32
    Okay, maybe I should have put more info ... I wasn't thinking paint. The hemp oil sounds interesting. I am worried about blotching.

    I have shellac, wipe on poly, General Finishes Arm-R-Seal, Zinsser Sealer and wax but I was wondering about something like tung oil maybe? From reading around it sounds like plywood needs some sort of sealer for most applications, but I've never done oil and I think you don't seal with oils, right? If I leave the inside raw wood, which I did think about, it will get really scuffed over time and have lots of dark lines, which is maybe fine, but I was also thinking about something darker I could periodically touch up.

    I do have some scraps, but before I went and bought an oil or something else, I was hoping for a few more responses. Thanks, though, Scott. The rest of my furniture in that room is teak, if that matters, so something darker might look good than keeping it as it is now. In any case, it will be a step up from the cardboard box I am currently using.

    There are 1000s of threads about finishing plywood, but to be more specific (which I didn't find in searching) I was wondering what might work on the inside (or maybe bare is better) that I could touch up for this high contact surface.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2019
    Location
    Fairbanks AK
    Posts
    1,566
    Is the plywood birch veneer?

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Oct 2017
    Location
    Santa Cruz, CA
    Posts
    32
    Yes, it is.

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