Thread: How to stop timber cracking at ends

Scrape the wax off before dressing (assuming you are concerned about the wax on the thicky/jointer blades). You should be able to remove any residual wax with White Spirits on pre-dressed boards (maybe a nylon brush to get into the grain a bit).

I dressed a whole stack of timber recently so that they would stack properly (chainsaw milled) and any ends that weren't already sealed I just painted with enamel paint (light blue actually). Some have said that paint won't contract or compress with the timber shrinkage like wax will, and that sounds very logical, but these boards are at least 50% dried already (and I didn't have anything else).

Originally Posted by Dengue

Hello, I have obtained a short rough sawn board of Qld Silver Ash 200 x 30 x 500 and it has the ends waxed. I had also bought a board of Tassie Blackwood off eBay and it too had the ends waxed. Which is a pity because you lost a few inches each end when dressing.

Can anyone recommend an alternative way of preventing the ends drying out and cracking after boards these size are dressed. Assuming that they will not be resawn for a couple of months or so.

There is nothing, even proprietary stuff like EndCheck, that can be done to completely prevent the ends cracking as that is the nature of drying wood. If you don't want to apply a product to the ends you can tightly wrap the ends in plastic but then you risk fungal/mould growth on/in the timber and it won't prevent some cracking.

If you are going to use an oil type finish the wax or proprietary wax like products should not be a problem as they can be scraped off and the any residual can be washed out by gently warming the wood with a hot air gun and warn turps, and any oil based finish should still adhere to the timber. This won't get all the wax out of deep cracks but that usually does not matter.
House paint is a PITA. Plastic paint will contract a bit more that enamel but eventually that too will crack. The big prob with paint is if the material has already cracked the oaint penetrates into the cracks and getting that out of cracks even with paint stripper is very difficult.

Another material I have used is 50:50 Bondcrete:water as this stays fairly flexible for some time.

Hey bob, I would never have thought to have used bondcrete. Thanks for the tip, normally I just paint the ends but I will give the bond crete a go.

Originally Posted by Bluegum

Hey bob, I would never have thought to have used bondcrete. Thanks for the tip, normally I just paint the ends but I will give the bond crete a go.

The ends of the slabs for these bench tops were cut from a tree I planted in our backyard in 1978.
The tree was cut down and slabbed and ends Boncreted in 1998? and in 2011 when I pulled them out from under the house I decided to use a couple of slabs for these bench tops


The slabs were cut to length only at one end and the other 3 edges including one end with the original chainsaw cut marks was left as is.
I took as much of the Bondcrete off with a wire wheel on an angle grinder, filled the gaps with epoxy. and then sanded everything flat.
Here is a close up of one of the original ends so you can see the extent of the cracking.
That is not too bad for the heart wood piece of a WA River Red Gum (not Marri)

These slabs had ideal drying conditions under our house, there is enough air exchange tp prevent mould otherwise it's not too hot or cold.



For anyone that is interested there are more pics of those slabs in this post https://www.woodworkforums.com/showth...73#post1322073

Looks good bob. I like it.

Bondcrete is PVA so it, like any similar product (old fashioned aquadhere, not the many new products with that name) will do the trick. Even good old axle grease has been used in the past and it gets very dirty and messy but can be cleaned off with most petroleum solvents.
There is probably no "best" product, rather many that can serve as long as you understand their side effects and limitations.

Why do you cut or clean the wax off the ends to plane them? I've never heard of that being done before so I'm curious as to why you'd do it.

If the timber is well dry reapplication of an end sealer is pointless unless you expect it to be shifted to somewhere a lot drier anyway - end checking / drying splits occur at high moisture contents not at lower ones. Its just that the cracks don't expand to the visible stage till later.

Originally Posted by John.G

Why do you cut or clean the wax off the ends to plane them? I've never heard of that being done before so I'm curious as to why you'd do it.

I don't know about Dengy, but one of the reasons I don't like wax is it picks up grit. Boards are often stood on their ends and on logs with waxed ends may have been rolled around in the dirt I will often dock a couple of inches off to remove the gritty wax before milling them.

If the timber is well dry reapplication of an end sealer is pointless unless you expect it to be shifted to somewhere a lot drier anyway - end checking / drying splits occur at high moisture contents not at lower ones. Its just that the cracks don't expand to the visible stage till later.

Yep that makes sense.

I use an old rice cooker. melt blocks of beeswax in it, and brush it onto the end grain if the boards are quite wide.

If the end of board fits neatly into the rice cooker I feel I get the best result because I just dip the end in, and feel the wax gets in deeper.

feel that wax is far better than paint. paints messy.

Originally Posted by BobL

I don't know about Dengy, but one of the reasons I don't like wax is it picks up grit. Boards are often stood on their ends and on logs with waxed ends may have been rolled around in the dirt I will often dock a couple of inches off to remove the gritty wax before milling them.

Okay, I can see the sense in that. We re apply wax when we dock the log prior to milling and from there it should never hit the ground again until its sold, but unless its something particularly valuable we dont wax the sides at all so I'd not have thought of the grit factor. Thanks for sharing that.