End Cuts, Sealants, and Finishes

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve now been asked twice about the most effective method of sealing end grain of ipe. There is considerable discussion in online forums regarding this matter, and I have to admit I cannot yet make an authoritative decision regarding this matter. That will change soon. Hopefully by the end of the month I will have some sort of start.

My initial hypothesis is that Anchor Seal, when properly installed, will be the equal to other sealers available on the market. I have no factual basis—just a lot of what I’ve already heard among those in the industry. I’d like to see how it measures up against the two-part epoxies, and some of the synthetics. There are A TON of products out there for this type of application.

Same with stains and finish sealants. This testing business could end up being pretty expensive. Just running some basic numbers through my head, the investment of wood, finishes, and sealants will exceed $1000 just to get started with a reasonable sample. And this will be just to see how quickly I can destroy the product…

I’d been planning on a study of various types of lumber available for exterior application. The first question I’d been asked was in reference to the finish application of the product. Again, there is a lot of disagreement among installers. Each individual has their own experiences with various products, and I’ll be conducting a survey quite soon from contractors throughout the country. If I can get them to respond to the survey…

See, here’s the thing about finishes…You generally get what you pay for. Last spring and fall, I was painting a wooden fence on the family farm. It needed it. Looked terrible. I scraped the hell out of the thing, repaired various splitting boards and such, and used a water-based primer on the stuff. This was done out of expedience, not because I’m clever.

I’m not clever. That thing looks like hell already, because a section of it blew over, and I got pissed I hadn’t sealed the thing in a proper oil-base before winter hit. And it was a hell of a winter here. So I get to not only rebuild the fence this year, I will also have the pleasure of painting it for a second consecutive year. I just ran out of time…

It looks to me that a separate test for end grain sealing and surface finishing should be performed. Here in Kansas, the weather is about as severe toward hot and cold extremes as anyplace I’ve looked up besides maybe Moscow. So, by exposing some sections to one coat, some to two, and some to three, we’ll be able to see some weathered results over time. The one coat application around here will be a tremendous failure, I’m sure. It will be interesting to see how quickly the samples deteriorate.

Maybe I’ll throw a sprinkler on them this summer when it gets up around 110F. Two or three times a day. This will be fun. I’ll admit right now I don’t know enough about this subject, but I’m looking forward to learning a little something new.