Post #229853 by SilverLine on Mon, May 1, 2006 5:19 PM

I was going to wait until this one was finished to post this, but I'm at a crossroads and could use some input.

Things had been really dry all last month (April) and I had some warm days to pull out this nice chunk of soft maple I claimed last summer. Well, now it's rained for 9 out of the last 10 days! 'Ol Tonga here has gotten soaked and all that nice sweat maple is molding up like crazy. I just tried the diluted bleach trick with no effect.

The thing is, I could go either way with this one. The grain in this wood is really beautiful, so if I could effectively remove all this mold, stain and varnish him, he'd be fantastic looking.

OTOH, I'm kinda likin' the old moldy look. My plan is for this one to take up residence on the lake house porch (enclosed) so it won't be exposed to the elements too much.

Can you stain/varnish over mold? I would like to at least seal it up so it doesn't rot away completely. Or is there a better way to remove all this mold?? I'm far from done carving, so there's still time to do just about anything.

BTW, special thanks to BK for his advice on getting around the tighter points of this guy, and thanks also to Tiki Diablo for his pattern transferring technique he shared at Coon Tiki!