One of my neighbors took down a small fruit tree, might be apple, and I
scored three pieces from the trunk. Roughed to round they’re a bit over
3” in diameter. Roughed to round four pieces each about a foot long.
They look like they have some possibilities for some lidded “boxes”.
Now I’m faced with “how do I keep these puppies from drying out too fast
and cracking” problem.

I’ve got a gallon bucket and a big pot with apricot rounds soaking in
them and I’ve got a stack of apricot logettes with the bark still on it
stacked under a tarp on the driveway, the ends hopefully sealed with
latex house paint whose color wasn’t what the original customer wanted
so it was really cheap.

LDD is a bit of a PITA because you have to rinse the slimey soap layer
off before you can do anything with the wood - and then there’s the
slime layer.
And I don’t think I want to paint the outside of a roughed to round
piece with latex house paint - wood chips and streamers I can get rid of
- gardeners love it. But with paint on them - especially orange - well
that’s not as desirable to gardeners.

Then I found a possible alternative to LDD and latex house paint.

Armstrong makes a Latex Primer S-185. It’s part of Armstrong’s latex
floor system - a latex primer for “all grades of concrete, poured in
place gypsum underlayment and all APA trademarked wood underlayments”.
It looks like and has the consistency of regular milk. A gallon of the
stuff was $9.80 US - cheaper than LDD and considerably cheaper than
Pentacryl (sp?). Sopped it on the fresh cut ends of my rounds and it
soaked in quickly for the first three or four applications before its
absorption started to slow down. Dries almost clear and in half an
hour has a very light tack - Post It light tack.

This stuff has possibilities - slows down drying to allow time for green
turning. Get things close, foam brush on a few coats and wait before
going farther.

Anyone try this stuff already. If so - am I spitting in the wind or
will it work?

charlie b