Thread: Outdoor furniture timber, deck, and finish?

Spotted gum, blackbutt and ironbark all come immediately to mind. All durability class 1 and all tough, beautiful timber that is widely available.

Is the deck completely exposed to sun and rain or is it under-cover? If exposed you will have a hard time keeping the natural colour without a lot of maintenance. If under cover / shade you'll be fine. You could use Cutek extreme for the deck, and an oil with a UV inhibitor in it for the furniture. Alternatively you could use a marine spar varnish but it's more work up front and if it fails you'll have far more work to refinish. I'd stick with an oil.

Cheers, Dom

Cheers, Dom

I live in Interior Cedar Hemlock Biogeoclimatic zone. Western Red Cedar to be correct.
Despite detractors, WRC is as durable as we expect for outdoor applications, totem poles included.
It will weather, unfinished to a silver grey without spalling with splinters.
In the open, WRC lasts without finish for less than 100 years
WRC is really fingernail-soft. All sorts of nicks and dings will become obvious.
I'd reject any wood with less than 20 growth rings per inch = just too soft to be practical.

I don't know the criteria of your "durability" scale so you should look at local woods
for their replacement availability as the furnishings deteriorate.

I called into Monaro timber recently (very helpful people) to get pricing on blackbutt boards for a deck rebuild I have to do.

They suggested I also consider silvertop ash, which they can get in good quality and has a similar appearance to blackbutt. Slightly cheaper too.

Silvertop Ash

Similar colour variation to blackbutt (I don't want anything too dark)

TBH I would avoid Blackbutt like the plague if it is going to be exposed to the elements. Under cover like Dom's table and benches is fine (I think). Exposed it will crack and split. DAMHIKT.

Spotted Gum would be a better bet. WRC is good for durability (and super light for moving around) but you may have a problem with joints becoming loose due to its softness. Spotty would be significantly heavier so maybe spotty tops on WRC legs & chassis?

Thank you all for the responses! Advice in here clarified what I should be looking for, and I went back to Google for some additional things to understand further. I came up with this document: http://www.hyne.com.au/documents/Fea...ance_final.pdf

If I am reading this right (and I doubt it, as advice above indicates differently), I am seeing that Grey Ironbark, Blackbutt, Spotted Gum and Forest Red Gum have a durability class of 1 (page 4, table 4), and thus in above ground applications (using heartwood only) I could expect a service life of 40 years assuming proper treatment and maintenance (page 1, table 1)?

The comments on Western Red Cedar reinforce my previous research - but I was thinking that it was about the only other alternative other than Teak... now I have other alternatives

I'm surprised to find that a simple oil would preserve the timber furniture though - I guess I'm being a bit paranoid about it because a few years ago we bought (before we moved and I had room to set up a shop) an outdoor setting from (I think) Freedom Furniture (or some other big box place), and it only lasted about 2 years before starting to crack, splinter and fall apart. Mind, this was listed as some FSC certified renewable faroffistan timber that no-one really knows what it is...

This time, I want to make sure it's right!

Originally Posted by Midnight Man

I'm surprised to find that a simple oil would preserve the timber furniture though

Don't get too excited about oil keeping the timber looking great. Firstly it will have to have some sort of colour tint to keep out the UV. No tint = UV penetration. The amount of tint will determine the UV blockage, and therefore the frequency of re-application.

Even Decking Oils marked "Natural" have a tint, and sometimes they don't even tell you what colour it is. By Natural they just mean the lowest amount of tint, but it's really quite misleading.