Hello

I built a picket fence this year. The pickets were cut from air-dried pine sold as "board-and-batten", for siding.

The wood sat in my basement workshop over the winter after I milled it but before I put the finish on.

I rolled on a coat of primer or two (Zinsser bulls eye exterior primer), and sprayed on the stuff home depot calls "deck stain". I don't actually know what that is, the can has no technical details on it. It's waterbased and quite thin but it doesn't feel like any stain I used in the past. I'd rather call that thin paint than stain.

Anyway, from the start I had problems with bleeding through the finish. That's why I put two coats of primer on.

I'm guessing that's the sap from the pine that has not dried up because it never went into a kiln.

This is what it looks like:

bleeding.jpg

I won't be doing anything for this fence, but I really like working with this wood. It's exceptionally cheap, and looks pretty good once milled.

For the future, is there anything I can do to prevent that bleeding?

I've heard recently that shellac works great as a sealer and it sticks to anything, which sounds to me like it would make a great (though expensive) primer.

Or else, if I chose to put spar urethane on as a finish - would that work fine or would it have a hard time sticking to this stuff that's bleeding through?