Michael Dresdner

Q: I am building a cedar blanket chest, and want to finish the outside with shiny epoxy. A friend told me that when you finish western red aromatic cedar, that the finish will gum up in a few years.
A: Your friend has his stories somewhat mixed up. First, it is true that aromatic cedar contains an antioxidant that can impede the cure of oil based and other oxygen polymerizing finishes, but it does not happen over time; it happens immediately. Second, while it is true of aromatic cedar, the same is not true of western red cedar. Aromatic cedar is eastern red cedar, not western, and is a very different wood entirely. Western red cedar poses no such finishing problems. Finally, this problem only extends to oxygen polymerizing finishes, such as oil based polyurethane, oil varnish and spar varnish. Epoxy is not an oxygen polymerizing finish, so if you actually use a true epoxy finish, even on eastern red cedar, you won’t have any problems.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under clear coat, compatibility, polyurethane, varnish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.