Thread: red gum, grain filling and deks olje

Originally Posted by Corgan

Hhi guys,

I'm prepping some 136mm red gum decking boards for life as outdoor benches.

I didn't know you could get Red Gum decking boards, how thicjk are they?

Thought I'd give deks olje a go. Spent probably 6 hours recoating the #1 on the 6 boards, not really something I'd want to do again. I wet sanded some of the coats and now I'm onto the gloss coat, which I have mixed half and half with d.o. #1 for a satin finish. Got 2 coats of that on so far.

I'd be concerned with giving deks olje a go!

The problem I'm having is that the grain looks very open and when the light hits it the finish is very rough looking. I've been wiping it on with a rag as brushing seems hard to get a good smooth finish

I'm really concerned that after so many coats the grain still looks open.

My question is, how should I go about filling the grain now for a smooth satin sheen. I wet sanded the second coat of d.o. #2 and added some fine sanding dust to make more of a slurry but it hasn't seemed to have an effect.

I'm not sure about the sanding dust.

My next question is, if I decide to use a product like sikkens cetol in the future, how should I go about grain filling in that case- will it still apply properly over one of the commercial paste type fillers?

By then grain filling may be secondary to filling up Red Gum cracks.

Thanks all
Corgan

What's wrong with the gray weathered look anyway, you'll be forever trying to keep the red in Red Gum in an outdoor situation otherwise, surely there's better thing to do with your time

uthanks for repying- I don't mind the occasional recoat to keep the colour in. But I can't say I've enjoyed the deks olje so far. Lol

The boards are 19 thick. I can get it in 65, 86 or 136, all 19 thick. Its really nice timber with some great mottled figure and a nice colour, just not having much luck building an even satin sheen.

That said I only have 2 coats of the #2 mix on, so maybe after some more it will fill the grain in? The #1 doesn't build anything on the surface.

I can tell you brushing a few coats of decking oil on and being done with it sounds pretty good right now )

Hi Corgan sorry for my reply, I was a bit hot and bothered with the summer crisp and I wasn't much help with your deks olje predicament, what is deks olje anyway and what's the longest lengths of your Red Gum decking?

Olje

no problem mate,

its a norweigan product i think, basically an oil finish that dries hard like a varnish. has 2 steps, deks olje #1 which is a saturating oil and deks olje #2 which is the more varnish-like part that you put over the top after you've brushed in a million coats of #1

can't say i know much about it or that i'm overly impressed so far.. the #1 looks pretty good for an oil, if you want to leave it at a very flat finish but i want more of a satin sheen. its the #2 thats giving me the problems with not filling the grain and ending up with a speckled shiny finish. im thinking i've been too conservative with it so far so i'm gonna try just building thicker layers. the stuff doesnt like drying real quick either it seems

the longest plank of the redgum i got was 2400 i think, but there were some monsters in the stack. it's qld forest redgum, std and better grade and its pretty nice stuff. around $10.50 a meter for the 136x19