chainsaw carving finishing?

[cowboyvet]

Ok, I know there is many different opinions on this and ways to go about it so I'm going to ask what works best for you? What do you use for inside carvings or outside carvings? Best ways to fill and repair splits after finishing? What do you tell your customers for care instructions? Any other tips and tricks you would like to share to help out a fellow carver?

 

[cowboyvet]

I'll start off with what I've found in the short time I've been experimenting. I think "Cetol 1 by Sikens" is a very good product for outside carvings. It does not gloss up and penetrates very deeply in the wood. Downside to it is it only comes tinted (no clear option) and $80 a gallon. The other product I've been using is just marine spar which I can get for $35 a gallon. It doesn't penetrate the wood as far, glosses up, and seems to darken up after a few years in the sun. I use three coats of either product for any carving going outside. I'm still looking for new and better options and have been playing with other finishes used in the log home industry.

 

[ctrees4$]

For outside carvings use any stain that says "oil penatrating"....filling cracks can be done by wedging a piece of wood in the crack,cut off excess with chainsaw,sand and refinish carving.

 

[cowboyvet]

For outside carvings use any stain that says "oil penatrating".

Do you just use stain only or do you use a sealer over the stain? How often do you tell your customers to reapply it?

I saw one person online who used minwax spar for outside carvings and his care instructions for his customers was to reapply twice a year. This sounds to me like overkill and a huge build-up of finish. Most people won't do it twice a year so I also wonder if this was just his way to say "you didn't follow the instructions so I'm not responsible how it looks in a few years"

 

[twoclones]

Ok, I know there is many different opinions on this and ways to go about it so I'm going to ask what works best for you? What do you use for inside carvings or outside carvings? Best ways to fill and repair splits after finishing? What do you tell your customers for care instructions? Any other tips and tricks you would like to share to help out a fellow carver?

Which finish works the best depends a lot on climate. Inside and outside are both climates just as are Missouri high humidy and Nevada total lack of humidity.

I live in the desert where irrigation water is a bigger issue than rain or humidity so I use spar varnish and thin the first application with laquer thinner. I tried linseed oil but our intense sunshine turned the oiled wood very dark grey Since spar requires maintenance, I have experimented with Australian Timber Oil but don't really care for it since it does not come in a colorless. Even their 'natural' is more like stain than oil.

Splits and cracks? I do not repair them. I do my best to use logs in a way which reduces cracking and to direct possible cracking to the back of my sculpture. Nothing looks worse than a repaired crack which has opened more after the repair.

In person, I tell customers to watch the end grain for changes as an indicator for them to reapply the finish. I have a web page with information about maintaining my carvings. In an effort to get more people to absorb the information, I made an xtranormal.com video with the same info.
http://woodhacker.com/carving_care.html

Telling people to reapply spar twice a year my get them to apply it once every two years.

 

[cowboyvet]

Thanks for the input 2C. We get all kinds of weather here in TN from hot dry to cold and wet. I would agree with you on people reappling any finish. Once it leaves, it will probably be lucky to see any maintanence ever again by 99% of the population.