Merbau- again, this time on a boat...

this piccy was posted by UteMad
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k2...acolours-1.jpg
on this thread
http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...t=49270&page=2

I am wondering how one goes about getting the two colours on the left, Driftwood and White.

The situation is, I have used some leftover merbau for some timber seating hanging off the back of my boat on the new pushpit I have built (yes, I know, heavy and not ideal but it was at hand and thus much cheaper than purchasing teak or white beach- as well, my replacing the old rusted iron pushpit with the new lighter stainless one, I have probably come out even with weight anyway), and I would like to get as much colour out of the timber as I can and get it as close to weathered white/silver/grey as possible.

my plans are to totally finish pre-drilling, fitting and sanding the timber pieces (one more half day should do it as 90% of the work is done now) and then as they will fit lengthwise in our bathtub/shower I will leave them in there to 'weather' and soak and wash out the tannin for a few weeks/months (hopefully weeks not months). Now and again I plan to give it a soak in nappisan to help the process along.
Lets just say, I have very patient girlfriend:wink: .

As it is seating, and I am concerned about splinters and cracking, I am considering oiling it after the colour has faded to stop it drying out excessively. Also as my sailboat is on a swing mooring, in spite of netting we do attract a fair share of bird crap, so I would hope that oiling might offer a little more resistance.

So I guess my questions are,
how to get to white/silver/grey (soon)?
after I get to this, should I oil?
I don't mind oiling quite regularly, and would naturally reach for either my tung or linseed- would this be OK?
Or should I just leave it raw? (If I was going teak I would have gone raw)

any other thoughts?
any yes, photos will follow soon,
thanks,
Hans.

this is a shameless bump,

no takers?

main question,
How do I get my Merbau to go white or silver, rather than dirty old grey?

cheers,
Hans.

I'm no expert, but reading the link that you supplied, seems like treating the timber with Spa-N-Deck , obviously a proprietary system, you can accomplish that colour.
How's that for service, a search on google comes up with: http://www.floodaustralia.net/brochures/Spa-N-Deck.pdf
cheers
TM

Thanks TM,
I gave flood Australia a call this afternoon and had a good talk with one of their experts on Spa-N-Deck.
I may use the product or I may not.
I have finished shaping and sanding the timber and now have it soaking in the bath (after I had a shower over it:wink: ).

The imediate results were rather impressive.
The water within 5 minutes had gone a strong tea colour.

I then put Napisan Plus in and was amazed to see a rapid and immediate reaction. Great clouds of black started instantly drifting off the timber and an oily sheen formed on top.

I am going to repeat this process untill either no more tannin comes out, or untill my girlfreind cracks it over having to stand over a pile of timber when she showers:D

If it looks good when I finish this process I may just oil it, otherwise I will just leave it bare to fade in the sun and weather out on my boat. Later on I may consider Spa-N-Deck.

Cheers, Hans.

here is a quick shot I just snapped tonight.
I am going to put the pushpit on the boat tomorrow.

the Merbau soaked in the bath (from our showers) for around 3 weeks, with intermitent napisanings- until the water almost started to remain clear after a day of soaking.

then I re-sanded all the raised grain up to 3200 and have saturated it in pure tung oil for the last few days.
This shot shows a bit of dried oil bloom that came out of the pores today (let alone all the oil scum I have to clean off the metal), that I will rub off by giving it a wet (oil) steel wool (000) rub tomorrow on the boat once I have it bolted down.
Not the best shot, but you get the picture, and I will update it tomorrow.
There are many imperfections on this, but for having made if from scratch, from design and a pile of stainless steel and timber- as a newbie who is learning all as he goes, I am pretty damn happy with it-
Fingers crossed the fitting goes well