Thread: Finish That Won't Mask Smell of Timber

Vicks vapour rub on the camphor.

There are few woods with a persistent smell. Most of those are conifers.
I carve mostly western red cedar (Thuja plicata). The wonderful aroma does no last until the next day.
Yellow Cedar (Chamycyparis nootkatensis) smells like something died. Neutral the next day.

As the Artful Bodger suggests, use some sort of an essential oil as the aroma source ( the moth ball effect).
Claim loud and long that it's coming from the wood.

Originally Posted by 62woollybugger

I've finally got around to using some of Maplemans highly figured Camphor Laurel stump he milled a couple of years back. What finish can I use that won't mask the smell of the CL. I just want something to give the surface a bit of a sheen. I've also got a few bits of Huon Pine & will want something to finish that with as well, without masking the smell.
Someone once told me to use rice bran oil on Huon pine, anyone else evr heard of that?

Wood smells / aromas (nice and not so nice), emanate from wood surface because they are VOLATILE and evaporate from the wood surface UNLESS they are "locked in" by a synthetic finish eg lacquer epoxy resin etc.

These volatiles are often monoterpenes (eg as in camphor laurel) which diffuse from inside the wood to the surface where they evaporate into the air where they are smelt.

The higher the ambient temperatures the greater the loss from that wood surface, the greater the wood thickness the greater the supply to the surface and longer the smell will persist. You can stop the loss with a synthetic finish but you will not smell the wood that’s under the finish.

One can slow down the diffusion and evaporation rate with an oil / wax finish which is more permeable to such compounds. Then these often have a smell (eg of turps) of their own which last quite a while. This would apply to Rice Oil.

The Huon Pine wood oil would diffuse into the Rice Oil and can be smelt in there, so there is some validity to the Rice Oil on Huon Pine claim.Huon oil more persistent (ie less volatile) than camphor from camphor laurel .

As the diffusion path length increases with distance, the wood smell is bound to decrease over time.
In the western red cedar that I use, the coastal cedar smell last longer, from sawdust and shavings it never stops.
Interior cedar, from my district, loses its smell overnight.
Experience shows and smells that the outer "dead" layer is less than 2 mm overnight.
It's only minutes of carving the next day and the smell is back.

The human nose will get numb to the smell over time, you won't notice the wood smell at all.
I'd try some sort of essential oil, a drop or two, like incense, but not so often as you will get used to it.