Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Pecan wood slabs

Cray if you paint the end grain with high oil base paint you will cut back on the end checking too when drying. All my hardwood whole sales have the ends painted before steam drying. Each mill has a different end paint. There is a red end red Oak from a mill in Pennsylvania that I will never by from ever again. Junk grading and honeycombing from drying to fast.

The reason for the paint on the end grain is because you want the water from drying to come out the face grain. It will come out of the end grain much faster and over dry the ends.

Cray, It's a small world, I had breakfast on that hi top table in your pic in Hahira last Saturday. It's the first time I've been in there since the fire and I remembered this post as I sat there admiring it. Great idea to fit the two slabs together in the middle, functional while you left some of the live edge intact. My "retirement home" is about 5 miles east of there. I will PM you about getting a couple of slabs from you.

2O2S

I did paint the ends of a few. It did cut back on the small checks. But not the bigger ones.

It is a small world. It's easy to think that you are so removed from everyone online. But you could be talking with a neighbor without knowing.

The big cracks could be from the log having it before it was even milled into planks. Not much you can do about that. Also, when you cut thicker pieces it is harder to prevent splitting, warping, etc. due to the extra stress of thickness. Then add into the species, some are harder to dry than others. I think pecan would be one of those, as are most fruitwoods.

If you want to decrease the waste factor, I would move to a wax sealant.

Edit; also the pith in planks will crack it. Which means at lest one piece in every log will have it, even more if the tree isn't straight.

I was talking to a member here that was a mile down the road from my families place and didn't realize it for several months.

The bigger ones come from the hart of the tree. There is nothing you can do when you get close to that.