I've come into possession of a fair amount of barn wood, something I've
never worked with before. The question is, how do I take this
weathered, glorious wood and make those beautiful things I've seen
people make with it.
More specifically, do I sand it down to smooth it out, or just enough to
get rid of the potential splinters. Also, do I finish it the same way I
would with "normal" woods?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Dakota Mike
Michael Robinson <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> I've come into possession of a fair amount of barn wood, something I've
> never worked with before. The question is, how do I take this
> weathered, glorious wood and make those beautiful things I've seen
> people make with it.
>
> More specifically, do I sand it down to smooth it out, or just enough to
> get rid of the potential splinters. Also, do I finish it the same way I
> would with "normal" woods?
>
> Any help is greatly appreciated.
>
> Dakota Mike
Here's mine: http://musial.ws/big_pile_o.htm
The barn was about 125 years old or so and from the ring sizes, it
looks like the trees were at least 200 years old when they were cut
down. Ring count is 20-30 rings per inch. 3 truckloads for a bit
over 200.00 all 4/4 & 5/4
But enough gloating.
I'm planing it down and building an office/library. Frame and panel
wainscoting around the room, book shelves, built in desk, etc. I'm
selling some more of it to a guy who rehabs houses and he's going to
mill it to use for flooring. That will probably still leave me with
400 b.f. or so for various stuff that I'm still thinking about.
I'm just using some orange shellac as a finish and it's BEAUTIFUL. If
you're interested, I'll post some pictures of the shelves, etc.
Steve
Michael Robinson <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> I've come into possession of a fair amount of barn wood, something I've
> never worked with before. The question is, how do I take this
> weathered, glorious wood and make those beautiful things I've seen
> people make with it.
>
> More specifically, do I sand it down to smooth it out, or just enough to
> get rid of the potential splinters. Also, do I finish it the same way I
> would with "normal" woods?
>
> Any help is greatly appreciated.
>
Barn wood is impossible to reuse but as a persoanl favor I'd be
happy to haul it away for you. Where are you located?
Seriously, what you do with it will depend on the application and on
the wood. Barn wood will typically be full of big and small bits
of metal, sometimes including bullets and shotgun pellets. So the
first step should probably be to go over it with a good metal detector
and dig out all the metal.
Then beams may be resawn into dimensional lumber for furniture,
or turning blanks, or just surface cleaned and resused for post
and beam construction. Siding may be planed down to fresh wood,
or just lightly sanded to remove the grey wood, depending mostly
on taste, then used for raised panels, tabletops, doors etc.
Barns were typically made from a mixture of whatever grew locally,
in some parts of the Eastern US chestnut was favored for siding
and it is not unusual to find black walnut beams. There is a good
chance it will be old-growth and probably plainly figured as fancy
figure implies less stable wood and was typically not used for
construction.
--
FF
Michael Robinson wrote:
> I've come into possession of a fair amount of barn wood, something I've
[snip]
Brush/vacuum to remove the dirt. Carefully remove any metal, ceramics,
bone, etc. that will bung up your blade. Do a light belt sanding to
take our more dirt, long splinters, etc. Hit it again with the shop vac
and inspect again for foreign stuff while you're at it. Now you are
ready to joint, plane, resaw, etc. this stuff into whatever lumber you
need for your project. If you want really nasty ugly stuff, stop after
step 1.
mahalo,
jo4hn