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Esteemed Listers,
I have been involved in various aspects of the lumber trades for most of my life, and here's my suggestions:
Redwood is NOT strong enough for the span of the seats. If you find redwood slats, they are certainly NOT original. REDWOOD is way too soft and brittle for this use, and is not a good structural wood. While it DOES resemble mahogany in color, trust me when I say that redwood won't work. Mahogany is fine, but VERY pricey!
ASH, (white ash specifically) while it is strong enough, and a good knock off for oak, is subject to rapid decay outdoors. You may be familiar with ash as the wood baseball bats are made from. It IS true that old coachwork was made from ash, and it's also true that ash is the reason so little of it survived. It was prized for its ability to be finished finely, and its extreme springiness in carriage parts, coupled with its ability to be steam bent to very tight curves, and not for it's longevity.
YELLOW PINE, especially southern yellow pine, and particularly the heartwood of same, a little redder and harder, is the most common wood we find today in factory wood pickup beds and trailers. It is the ubiquitous coarse grained wood of outdoor decks and landscaping timbers. It makes great bows, slats, and gate parts, if you select the best boards. It's almost as heavy as oak, about equal in decay resistance, and a bit easier on tools. Yellow pine has a few bad points too. On flat sawn boards, (the ones with the big grain swirls that look like plywood) the summer wood tends to shell out with weathering, and it makes gigantic, painful, hiney-poking splinters. It is also loaded with resins, and as a result is hard to keep a painted finish on. yellow pine is available in the green copper chrome arsenite (CCA)pressure treated variety, and also a newer clear non-toxic borate treated version. The borate treated stuff lasts forever in ground contact. It actually improves with a!
ge!
Oak, specifically the white oaks, make the best slats and seats. White oak is not as porous and water permeable as the red oaks are, due to differences in micro-structure. White oak need not be pressure treated, but as all wood, it should be finished with something.
I have found the Flood Company clear deck preservatives to be best, lasting a few seasons. They can be painted over, and they act as anti-oxidants when left bare. The wood remains its natural color instead of graying.
Oak can be gotten cheaply from any place that sells fencing. Ask for "horse fence". You'll be buying 1 x 6 x 16 ft long oak planks that are graded "log run". This means you get all the bad ones along with the good ones. If you ask to select a few from the pile, most places will permit this. Average price in NJ seems to be between $6 each and $10 each. It varies with the season and the supply. Horse fencing is usually green and unseasoned, so you may have to stack it with stickers between the boards and let it dry for a few months under cover of a roof. Try to select boards which have the closest grain lines, "edge grained" as they are called, because they are sawn across the center of the log, thus, the annual rings show up as closely spaced stripes. Look at the dead end of the plank, and what you want to see is straight vertical stripes, not curves or half-circles. (simply put)
Wood which has been stored outdoors will contain more moisture than a paint finish will tolerate. As the water leaves the wood, it will lift the paint finish. Dry your wood thoroughly before painting, and then just paint it like you would anything else. Prime first, then paint two coats of finish paint.
I hope this is helpful!
CJ
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 01 2000 - 22:37:13 PDT