Post #394539 by TikiTres on Wed, Jul 16, 2008 6:01 PM

Well since I started this thread I'll toss my test runs into it in case anyone else decides to give this a go. I did a cedar sample this evening and it is much easier to work than the poplar. The grain relief is deeper and the raised grain stands up to wire brushing/ sanding better (doesn't scratch). The softer wood between the raised grain still scratches, but it's an interesting effect. The left board in the pic below is the cedar (piece of an unused fence picket) and the right is the previous poplar test. The cedar has the following sample finishes (single coat):

Top- Behr "cedar naturaltone" sealer
Middle- amber varnish
Bottom left- clear varnish
Bottom right- Maple stain

The stain completely covers the darkened raised grain, so that's out. The others are all decent, but not exactly what I had in mind. I'm going to get some darker toner sealers tomorrow and try some more tests. I'm also going to put a 2nd coat of each on this evening to see what that does.

The poplar has 4 test finishes as follows (all 2 coats):

Amber varnish
Amber varnish overcoated with clear varnish
Maple stain
Maple stain overcoated with clear varnish

I'll also get some pine and fir to try out. Might as well get them all tested before I jump into the sconce project :)

UPDATE 07-19- Here's another set of finish tests on cedar:

Upper section is clear semi-gloss polyurethene (1 coat left, 2 coats right)
Middle section is Storm Gray semi-transparent stain (w/ 1 coat semi-gloss poly on right)
Lower section is Clove Brown semi-transparent stain (w/ 1 coat semi-gloss poly on right)

Surprisingly the gray stain looks very gray on the brush and not the least bit gray on the wood. These stains were small samples from Lowe's I decided to try, but I still don't like stain (makes the wood too dark). I'm going to stick with just clear semi-gloss poly for this project.

[ Edited by: TikiTres 2008-07-19 15:44 ]