Thread: stain and finish for fresh jarrah wall panels

Hi Spearfish.

While not anywhere near on the scale of your job, I've just finished a project where I used Hard Burnishing Oil on Jarrah, which is primarily made up of Tung Oil and then some other bits if I have read the label correctly. The Jarrah I had came out a light-mid red, but any end grain got very dark (I've attached a before and after for you to see the difference). The three vertical stripes are Jarrah, the white (later honey) timber mountain ash and the posts merbau. I love what oil did because it added depth to the piece by highlighting all the variations in the grain without giving too much direct shine. Grain appeared from nowhere on all of the timbers and all of a sudden everything looked a million bucks.

Your end result will depend on your source timber (not every tree is the same) and how it absorbs the oil. Another major consideration is the amount of sunlight that these walls see - if it's a lot you may need to consider an exterior grade finish just so that the UV coming in through open windows doesn't age your walls and you're back re-oiling them every few months. That may be hypochondria on my part, as oil finishes are used on many timber floors with great success, so the appropriate oil and finishing technique is important. Not also that they are normally done with a powered floor sander, so short of putting your entire house on it's side or hoicking the floor sander up onto the wall (a la Hulk), the lots of work with a floor sander is going to turn into LOTS of work with a hand sander.

The main issue people have with tung oil is that is does darken the timber, which seems to be what you're avoiding. There are a whole range of other oils (e.g. boiled linseed oil) you could try that may change the colour less, but to get a durable finish on something like a wall, you're going to have to burnish them to get the relevant oil to polymerise in the wood and harden off. Once again, that's a proper amount of work with a sander if you're doing that, but would look great once done. Before you went down that path, I'd be getting a scrap piece first, applying the finish and putting it against the walls you've lined so that you can see just how dramatic the colour difference will be. It'll spot repair without too many dramas and maintenance isn't awful, but can be regular if in an exposed spot. If you're happy to do the work needed to get a decent hard wearing oil finish, give HBO, pure tung oil or a white/clear oil a go on some samples and see what takes your fancy.

If it were a piece of furniture and you were willing to go down the non-poly path but didn't want an oil, I'm fairly confident that there would be suggestions from the other more experienced hands around here of white shellac, which gives the timber the "wet look" colour. However, if we're talking walls here, that again leads me to believe that that might not be practical unless you really want to spend some time getting this finish up to scratch. I've not gone down the shellac path yet, but my experience is that it looks best with layers and can tend to be a bit soft, but can be spot repaired without undue drama (similar to an oil finish), albeit some patience. Using a hardened de-waxed shellac will likely get around much of the durability issue, so it'd be worth investigating.

Then you're left going down the poly path. To some it's a sin, but one can't deny that the range of poly products out there mean that you really are spoilt for choice when it comes to UV or non-UV and satin to gloss finishes. I find poly a pain because you always see the bit of dust that got away or decided to come back after the finish has begun to go off. It also generally stinks unless it's water based and even then my relationship with it is spotty as best. Provided you do your prep and clean well, some here have had great results with poly products and they really can be the solution if you want a rapidly applied finish that'll last you ten or more years. For indoor furniture use only I know that Minwax wipe-on poly has been a popular choice, but lacking personal experience I have no way of helping you on the colour change that it imparts, the ease of maintenance or the durability in when used on a wall. Bear in mind that most polys require a complete stripping back before you can perform a repair or to replace an aged finish. Other responses (no doubt forthcoming) should give you an idea of what that might entail.

For reference, the first pic is the one I referred to above with the before and afters for the Jarrah with HBO. The second I have no idea what timber it is (I dug it up from the ground where it was used as a garden edge, planed and sanded it back and oiled/burnished it to 4000g), but you can see the potential colour and grain visibility difference that you can get from the timber. The final one is the capping piece of Jarrah after finish. You should be able to see the low angle shine, the darkness of the end grain and the approximate colour that I got with all of my Jarrah.

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Either way, put up some pics so all of us can see the wall!

Originally Posted by spearfish

...but I don't really want the reddish look if I can avoid it.

So why did you use Jarrah then? You use a beautiful timber renown for its rich reds and now you want to destroy it... strange

Originally Posted by rod1949

So why did you use Jarrah then? You use a beautiful timber renown for its rich reds and now you want to destroy it... strange

Yes, it sounds strange, but I didn't mean it like that. As my floor are already a deep rich red jarrah, I didn't want the floor to look exactly the same as the walls. I also used the Jarrah as the timber was extremely cheap (left overs from a job I did).

Yesterday I grabbed some offcuts and gave them one coat of decking oil, this gave them more of a brown tint, so I may go with that.

Sanding is going to be a pain, but I think just one run through with the orbital should be fine.