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seymore

Cedar Millglaze?

Question

Here is a close up pic of some rough sawn 12x12 WRC post that just in this section had this milkish white glaze.That when you sprayed water on it it just beaded off.

What would cause this something at the mill when it's cut?

cdrmillglaze4vb.jpg

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Shane,

Diamond Jim and Ed Burke of the WRCLA had a bit of a go round about "mill glaze" over on pressurenet.net. Apparently, the Forest Products Laboratory cannot find any truth that lumber mills produce any glazing on wood.

For cedar, it is some type of resin extractive that naturally can come to the surface of the wood. It can be removed with oxalic acid. This info is courtesy of Ed Burke and the WRCLA.

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When cedar tree's have sapling's. The saplings feed on the extracts from the mommy tree. When the mommy tree gets removed by the lumber jacker and brought to the slicer (mill). The lignin gland's still have an abundance of extracts to feed it's saplings. These look milky and shiney when chopped and sliced for human's and building.

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Shane,

Diamond Jim and Ed Burke of the WRCLA had a bit of a go round about "mill glaze" over on pressurenet.net. Apparently, the Forest Products Laboratory cannot find any truth that lumber mills produce any glazing on wood.

For cedar, it is some type of resin extractive that naturally can come to the surface of the wood. It can be removed with oxalic acid. This info is courtesy of Ed Burke and the WRCLA.

Is it not from the blade cutting the wood the heat?

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Rick that is the biggest bull and twisting of terminology of ever seen.Just maybe the sugar's get heated up and leave a glaze. What happens to sugar when you heat it? How much sugar makes up tree's?

Side note: My buddy has a house in RI ( beach front) was suppose to do decks but do to the weather could not go do. I find out he used a water based product that was highly recommended. COBOTS SPF( on new mahog) what a downer>>>><<<<?

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Jim,

I don't have a clue as I've never had a problem with mill glaze that I know of. Of course can only think of one job that I had first crack at brand new cedar. I do know that you can burnish cedar with defelting pads and a Makita, to the point where pigments will not take to the wood. Done it.

Friggin' acrylics, don't get me started. If ya' want to put plastics in your wood just buy composites. In my opinion, the biggest con job in stain manufacturing. I don't care if its in solid stains or semi-trans, I'm not going to use it.

Look, maybe we are all wrong. But I doubt it. We will certainly know in the next few years.

This guy with the new mahogany is a friend of yours and he used that stuff? Make him sand it off with a block of wood and sandpaper, without kneepads, in the hot sun without any beer. Teach him a lesson!

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Rick that is the biggest bull and twisting of terminology of ever seen.Just maybe the sugar's get heated up and leave a glaze. What happens to sugar when you heat it? How much sugar makes up tree's? Ed Burke should change his name to Ed Bark e? Bark e is the best finish on the market for live tree's.....

Jim are we barking up the wrong tree??

Diamond Jim's Millglaze donuts $4.99/dz?

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Some extractives in the heartwood make penetration of liquids next to impossible. This is what is being seen here. Taking into consideration the size of the knot, this came from an older tree.

What I have seen in mill glaze in cedar has been on surfaces that are more polished looking. I haven't seen it in a while and this could be due to changes in feed systems in planers.

Before, when boards were hand fed into a planer, the wood was taken in at a rate that was not always in sync with the size of the plane depth and would cause the planer to force the wood through, overheating the blades and create the phenomenon. In order to correct for this, the plane depth was reduced and the boards were fed through 2-3 times instead adjusting the depth for each run.

We used to have to hand sand these pieces in order to get them to accept stain at the sister plant where that process was completed. We used to get a number of rejects that would repel the stain due to this problem.

Rod!~

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Very interesting post Rod!! Until i started blasting, I didn't realize that "hard grain" doesn't really accept stain. It takes a little color, but it kinda dries on top, like a knot. Perhaps that is the problem Shane,

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Jon,

I haven't seen that yet, but I can understand the condition and look forward to some elaboration about this "hard grain" so I understand better what you are referring to. Preliminarily, I assume you are talking about late wood. Let me know if this is what you mean.

I didn't see that in the pic's above but am keeping an open mind here.

This could get interesting...

Rod!~

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Rod,

...Yeah, 'latewood'. I'd actually never heard that term until Ed corrected me on earlywood/latewood (I am sure Diamond Jim is chomping at the bit to crack a joke about these terms:))

If you blast a piece of wood (you'll wanna try this as an EXPERIMENT:)) you can keep blasting, and blasting, and blasting and totally remove all of the early wood/softwood. Then you kinda get down to another layer of hardgrain. I've noticed this experimenting with log siding, but haven't tried it with log, lumber, decking, or fencing. But what I noticed is that the hardgrain below the softgrain looks innocuous, but doesn't allow for absorption. Like hard grain.

..So my point on Shane's pic is that a particular area may look like it will absorb oil, but not due to the hardness of the grain. Not sure how this will read, but it sure typed out like a Madman's Ramblings.:) Hope it is sensible.

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Upon review, Shane's pics clearly show what I was trying to say.....look to the right half of both pics. The "smoother" area won't absorb stain in the traditional sense, in my guess.

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Jon,

I concur with you on the area you mentioned as I notice it is in parallel with the growth ring in the wood and will not take stain the same way.

Your guess maybe, but I think you are correct.

I saw some of this on the log home we did recently in the same areas we blasted and noticed that in areas where the growth ring ran parallel with the log face, it didn't want to take the stain the same way as the newer growth wood around it and was noticeable in the way it would not soak in the stain. It actually seemed to push it back out. Although it was pine log and here the pic is cedar, they both have characteristics which exhibit the same thing when it comes to staining...Have you seen this?

Rod!~

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Yep....EXACTLY what I was trying to say, I'm just not as eloquent.:) That is what gives you the highlights of the hardgrain when you use a waterbase, as opposed to an oibase which turns that area black (sometimes.....debatable). Either way, it accentuates the final appearance IMO.

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When stripping water based stains, do you ever notice a blue stain residue in the logs? We have had to sand the heck out of the log but it goes pretty deep sometimes...Otherwise, it looks really crappy on the application and it turns out really dark and motley.

Rod!~

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Yeah, this one refers to the grain being laid over during planing and then when it is exposed to moisture it raises up and if the finish is not thick enough it will fail. Sanding will fix this type of problem.

The mill glaze being refered to is not related to this particular phenomenon.

Rod!~

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