Sapele Wood For Outdoor Use

In short the goal is to use epoxy to seal the wood fibers and essentially make them impervious to liquids.

Sapele wood for outdoor use.

To add color to sapele with a stain you don t want to apply an oil pigment stain straight to the raw wood. This density poses special problems for fastening and movement. Instead if you want to color the wood use this simple process. I do not want to paint it but rather leave the natural wood finish.

With supplies of north american mahogany dwindling more woodworkers are turning to sapele as a substitute wood for use in furniture and musical instruments. A lot of timber is chemically treated to prevent rot but some woods have superior natural rot resistance and can be used outdoors without chemical treatment. Some make use of recycled material but all are rotproof. Ipe has great resistance to decay and insects.

Additionally sapele grows with an interlocking grain pattern where the fibers twist around the tree as they grow. Sapele mahogany should be cleaned with a trisodium phosphate solution before applying any stain. Same as mahogany exploitation of sapele forests are regulated by several countries across africa. The finish is a 1 2 punch consisting of an epoxy sealer and a marine varnish.

Later today i will use wood filler to repair where i ve had to remove rotten wood. Because the wood was in such bad shape and i didn t want a high gloss finish two additional products were added to the lineup. This strips the tannins from the wood opening up the surface to fully accept a stain. Wood plastic composites wpcs are made from thermoplastic resins wood flour and wood fiber.

Utile or sipo is a kissing cousin of sapele same genus same properties roughly. It is made from sapele hardwood. I guess that i ll need to use a varnish type of finish rather than an oil because of the use of filler. Sapele wood is of medium hardness with a janka rating of 1510 lbs making is harder than most domestic north american species and almost twice as hard as genuine mahogany.

The stain will actually reduce the shimmer in the ribbon figure making it dull because it mainly stays on top of the wood. Any recommendations the wood is quite exposed. Choosing the right wood for outdoor projects natural wood is a great choice for adding warmth and texture to your garden. Because it will be used in exterior drying is not an issue.

Composites have no defects and do not compress like wood. Sapele does have very good insect and decay resistance heartwood not sapwood. The stain varnish applied to your sapele may be blistering because it was never treated with a stripper prior to applying the stain.