Thread: How to make wooden sink

Hi,

I have made a bathtub and sink out of surplus laminated vic ash beams.
i didn't want to bath in epoxy so just used a million wet sands with burnishing oil.
the tub leaks maybe half a liter, not much more then a couple of kids bathing!
water is ever only in there for a few hours. and once a year i take a bit of burnishing oil and
wipe the tub down , wait a couple of days and all good.
I agree the joining has to be exact and i used expanding waterproof polyurethane glue.

Keen to see pics!

Yeah, Rolf has nailed it. Everyone is worried about a bit of water, but the kids will half empty the thing well before the wood leaks.

I seem to remember ships were once built of wood.....

Barrels are still made of wood...with no glue, sealant or surface treatment...and they don't leak

I think there may be a couple of answers to this question - I've been thinking about a wooden bath and there seem to be several methods but the two general approaches are either like building up a hull for a boat or coopering for a barrel. The first relies on tightly laminated pieces of timber with a fibreglass skin on the outside or coated in epoxy. The coopering method uses staves held by metal bands (duh), a giant barrel with no top as it were. Japanese soaking tubs have twisted rope squished into the interior joins. I think the key isn't so much that a tub will leak - barrels don't and modern wooden hull ships are pretty good as well, considering the conditions they operate in, the consideration might be more having the wood dry out enough between uses to avoid any rot while at the same time making it robust enough that repeated wet-dry cycles don't cause the tub to warp or otherwise self destruct. Cedar, Cypress, and Larch seem to be the common modern woods for unfinished baths. Using epoxy or fibreglass coating, I reckon you could build the bath out of anything. I reckon if you're ok with a fibreglass coating, it would be the way to go, it'll last forever if it's indoors, it won't react with pretty much any chemical you could throw at it in a domestic install, and the wood is never going to get wet. Same would apply to a sink.

Wrt. wooden products (sans epoxies/fibreglass/glues/bracing etc. or carved from a single tree i.e. dugout) and water - think about water pressure/force... Boats/ships etc. have outer direct pressure from the water on the hull.

Baths; buckets; barrels etc. can be made with just joinery techniques but how effective and efficient it will be is another question. Most worthwhile wooden barrels/buckets have some kind of bracing to help contain the pressure from water weight. You can make bath tubs in the same way i.e. Wooden bath ｜ Shimizu mokuzai
Most high end laminated baths with have a glass reinforced epoxy resin coating i.e. Wooden Baths Limited :: Rosemarkie Contemporary Bath