Finishing a redgum mantlepiece

[camandnell]

Hi! We've just gone and sourced ourselves a beautiful bit of redgum from an old timber mill out the back of Echuca. We've put it through a mate's thicknessing machine and cut it to size for our mantlepiece, but we're wondering what would everyone would suggest to be the best way to finish a feature piece like that? :confused:

[scooter]

Not much help on the finishing q, cam, except to say use an oil to give a nice warm low sheen, rather than a poly plastic gloss.

Just a suggestion, may be too late, put the redgum in the house for a while to acclimatise before machining to final size; a mate put a blackwood mantlepiece in his lounge and it bowed to buggery Ended up looking shouse.

Welcome to the madhouse too, mate


Cheers................Sean, great band, sung "I was only 19"

[banksiaman]

Camandnell,

What Scooter says...oil would be best I think.
Acclimatise the wood is excellent advice as well, really depends on how it was stored and dimensions, the thinner it is compared to width and length, the more chance of distortion - it doesn't have the strength to hold itself straight.

Picture would be nice.

Good luck

[Carry Pine]

Banksia man and Scooter are right. Beautiful timber but can kick like b%^&$#ery. I have seen 2 examples- one a barbecue table that just rippled ( don't think it was dry at all) and another where the guy did all the right things but it was a really long mantelpiece, set into the wall with steel brackets and there was an ever so small crack in the plaster where it was dragging the bracket out of the wall.
Love the timber though.
Carry Pine

[BobL]

I'd vote for a fine, followed by a very fine, and then a very very fine sanding and oil finish, and leave it as long as possible in the same room as you will be installing it before you finally fix it in place. Also are you going to use your fireplace? If so the mantle may get warmer and drier than usual and and still buckle. I dunno what you do in that case, maybe place it somewhere near but not directly facing the fire, maybe standing on end alongside the fire? I think you should do this for a couple of months before fixing.

Cheers

[ubeaut]

Use it for a fence post and get something else.

If you intend to use it for the mantle then what ever you do make it free floating and don't attach it unless it is under 30mm thickness and then you may get away with it. Redgum is notoriously unstable and the thicker the timber the worse it is. I have actually seen bricks and mortar torn apart under the pressure of moving redgum and saw a kitchen that was literally destroyed when a redgum island bar with overhead cupboard tore itself out of the dyna bolts in the middle of the night.

At 30mm or less thickness it doesn't have the strength to destroy walls etc unless you just fix it to a plaster wall with a couple of angle brackets.... Then I would look out.

Finish it with oil. It won't be dried timber and even if it is it will have rehydrated by the time you come to install it.

[DPB]

So what about using this timber at all? If it's milled down to 12mil thickness for small boxes, will it move and destroy itself?