bigchaz

Its strange to me that they ran the 2x4 on the bottom rail and then still extended the spindles all the way to the fascia board

But it has penetrol!!! wow!

Ones I seen...countless others I have no idea. Im scared to follow up calls for maintanance since many of these jobs were relatively new wood, never been stained. When I sold the work I told many of them that I could maintain the finish with relative ease (and savings). Instead I imagine they will have to be fully stripped (the woodtux didnt come off easily btw) and then restained with AC. I dont know if I want the work since I wont make any money

Wrap around covered porch and lattice with cedar semi I love the way these thin boards look...it was Cox treated lumber. Nice wood whatever it is

Fence with cedar-semi/super cedar mix

First two are a two-tone job we did (floor isnt dried yet) Third is a quick builder special with cedar-semi Fourth is a cell phone camera - cleaned/stained and we added the privacy lattice

I think tony is talking about doing a two tone with two different stains. Like a walnut on the rails and cedar on the floor or something? Did I read that right, a two tone with no white?

Can't attach a picture from my phone but the super cedar deck I just finished took 6 gallons on a 14*12...the fuzzies are bright yellow, floor is almost black, rails looks unstained even with 2 coats...looks nothing even close in color to cedar semi. Am I missing something here? Wood was 3 yrs old never stained. Ill come back tomorrow to see it again but its already pretty dry and I'm thinking this is gonna need to be stripped and redone. is there a different balance of oils in the super cedar than the semis? It drinks like a timber oil and handles nothing at all like the semi-trans. Anyone have experiance with the super cedar?

First picture is before we cleaned the deck. Second picture the deck is stained...ignore the color...will be redoing it next week. But what is the cause of these squiggly lines? First thought Jake had when he saw it was a pressure washer going at uneven distances. The homeowner did attempt to clean his own deck but I asked him about it and he only used a bucket and deck brush. My helper did this one and he knows that my cardinal rule for pressure washing decks is to do each board in one pass, never stop and certainly never sweep from board to board. I also stain with a pad and go up and down each board. So any ideas?

AC has non drying oils in it already so why not just do two coats of that like everyone has noted provides the best appearance?

So solutions for chemical "sabatoge" as you call it? Do I need bare wood to rebalance PH with a good brightening?

Yea I sampled that area with another coat but its too oily so the dark areas got darker and just didn't dry. As it is in that picture it had tons of stain put down. (wet on wet but probably 3 back-brushings or coats in some spots) Ate it right up....except where you see the dark line Edit: Here's a picture from the side. You can see the line based on the shininess

Is sanding the best way to get rid of it? I was only planning on stripping the top layer of oil off so I can recoat but after I saw that squiggle I need to figure how to remove it. Semi trans might mask it a little better though

Good point. Cant argue with results. Walking on the stain sounds like a good excuse to buy those cute little tyvek boot covers....hah O and I think the back of my hand to a little childs head is the most effective ADD cure.... fyi people....I don't have children. Its a joke

I never noticed it until the deck was stained. Even when cleaned and dry there was no difference. It obviously affected the penetration of the oil or opened up the wood grain more in those areas since it is visible and touchably more oily in the dark areas

Good answer. I've realized I no longer read posts over 3 sentences. How does light coat followed by heavy coat compare do doing a heavy coat first and then misting a light coat when you leave?

Do you walk all over that first light coat when you do the rest of the deck?

I think what I've realized is that I need to product to be forgiving which is why I used AC in the first place. The time and money involved to sand and defur every square inch of wood on every deck new or old doesn't make for a good business model for me. Sticking with the semi-trans I can know that its going to look the same on just about every deck I do. When I get to a point where I have employees working unsupervised in the field, they shouldn't need to worry about darkening and pigments and strength of the pigment against uv degradation. No looking back and definitely no more of this me driving back the next day to make sure it dried right. Go with the semi-trans in my opinion versus the super cedar. I'm sure the super cedar looks great on some decks but not sure pressure treated pine is the best wood to have a product with such a high amount of yellow. It applies very dark and dries too light for my taste. Regular cedar semi trans does the trick

Basically what Jason said about using the semi-trans is right. Ill grant that some fuzzies could stand to be eliminated but it would look nothing close to that with cedar-semi trans instead of the super cedar.

Has your buddy in Arizona stripped anything yet?

Here is what I was able to find out after talking with Jake, who did a good job trying to explain the chemistry to my small brain. All the super cedar is is the cedar toner with 3 times the yellow transoxide pigment. The cedar toner and super cedar have the same amount of burnt umber(sp?) which is what would normally make the stain appear more opaque. I think they must have been trying to put super cedar under semi solid based on the volume of pigmentation in the stain. Because it uses so much more pigment that also explains why it is in the same price range. So technically speaking semi-solid makes sense, but I look at stains in terms of how solid they look to the eye. So the super cedar LOOKS no more solid than the transparent. Edit: picture from my phone This is in the sunlight so you don't see the black as much as you do from the other angle. The fuzzies between the boards annoy the heck out of me. I could defur them but I normally wouldn't have to do that.

Rick how do you handle raises for the fellow that's been working three seaons?

Where are you getting these "doesn't last as long, isn't as good for the wood, and doesn't finish as pretty" statements from anyway? If it finished too dark it sounds like your own problem for not picking a better color. For a free contest offered in kind by a distributor for a product that many of us use and purchase from him, maybe this isn't the best place to complain. I think many others are more than grateful that for the contest and its prizes.

When you are wiping down the stain always put all your used rags in a bucket with water. When they are soaked with stain they are quite combustible. (depending on stain of course)

Moving off my blending thread I'm curious What belt sanders you guys are using. Not floor sanders but hand stuff. Been using dewalt ROs for a while now but maybe it would be a good idea to keep a belt sander on hand. Dewalt, Makita, Ridgid who makes good stuff? What belt size do you use (3x21 4x24...etc)