A zoo project…wood selection for themed posts??
I’m developing a project for a zoo that is going to have distressed, carved wood posts on sign posts. The structural part of the posts are actually aluminum and will be surrounded by a carved, distressed and painted wood post. Due to the size of the post, the wood part will be built up of several pieces and glued together prior to painting/distressing. It’ll be outdoors, year-round in Colorado. The wood part will sit slightly proud of the ground and is attached with hardware.
The woodworker that’s supposed to work on the project keeps pushing for poplar with Titebond III. I’ve never had good results with poplar outdoors and think it’s the wrong choice. I’ve been pushing for cedar or redwood and using a Gorilla glue type polyeurethane adhesive. The woodworker keeps talking about the difficulty of gluing up these woods and “powdering out”, which all makes no sense to me. I think a less dense wood will also distress better (even considering sandblasting it for grain effect).
We need to produce about 25 of these so it’s got to work in a production-oriented way too.
Anyone have recommendations about wood choice? Could we considering pressure treating poplar? I’ve attached a sketch (leg are about 7″ x 6″ and 28″ tall.
Many, many thanks.
Seth
Replies
Thanks, Mark. I appreciate the alternatives too.
I've used cypress several times on exterior repairs, some trim and to build a couple screen doors. While good in the environment, the shaping you propose might be problematic with it. I suggest you get a pc and play around with it. There are checks to deal with and while it holds flat pretty good, it also might chip off easy with those gouges and curves you show in the drawing. Not saying it will, but something to consider and test.
Seth,
Cypress would carve pretty good and would last much longer than poplar, but my choice would be Spanish cedar.
Spanish cedar is more rot resistant than the new growth cypress and carves much better. Taste nasty though.
KK