Woodlife Coppercoat

[Bill Jobe]

Does anyone have experience using Woodlife Copper coat to seal endgrain on green tree limbs?
I bought it because I could not find Anchorseal locally and a friend and I were on our way out to take down an Osage Orange tree. I coated each piece several times because the stuff is as thin as water. Now I'm seeing some of my precious OO checking.
Cut some longer pieces up today and gave them many coats and then when dry I'm going to paint over that.

Is the problem simply because it's OO or is CopperCoat just junk?

[Jim Becker]

I'm not familiar with the product you mention, but in a pinch, paraffin wax is readily available and you can easily melt it over a hot plate with a small pan in a water bath...and then brush it on.

[Jamie Buxton]

As I understand it, copper-based solutions kill insects and fungi. However, what you need to do is restrict the flow of water out the ends of the logs. That's what Anchorseal does. (If you still can't find Anchorseal locally, you can use a roof-repair stuff called asphalt emulsion. It sticks to wet surfaces, and seals against water intrusion. And you can clean your application tool with water as long as the emulsion is still wet. Henry is the manufacturer I see most often.)

[John TenEyck]

No clue about Coppercoat, or OO, but aluminum roof coating works very well, as does AnchorSeal of course on the native hardwood logs I mill.

John

[Bill Jobe]

Well I guess my beloved OO will be insect and fungi free, but cracked
I did give each piece a healthy coat of paint over the CopperCoat.
Besides, there's plenty more where that came from.

A year or so ago a guy gave me half a dozen pieces of OO, and I gave the ends several coats of paint but they still cracked and split.
I'm not harvesting any more til I get some Anchorseal.

[Brice Rogers]

In a pinch, I've applied stretch-wrap to the ends and wrapped some masking tape around to help hold the stretch-wrap in place. It works very well. Also, sticking the logs in a plastic bag will keep things in "stasis" for a couple of weeks until you can get some anchorseal. I wouldn't recommend a whole lot longer though.

I also use paraffin regularly. I just heat it up and apply it with a paint brush. If mixed with paint thinner, the paraffin can be made soft to the point that it can be troweled on. My opinions of the thinned down version is mixed.

[Bill Jobe]

Looked up the product I used, the one a salesman at lowes told me was just what I needed and it says it's to prevent moisture from entering the grain ends.
Go figure. At least my OO won't suddenly go from 10% to 35% overnight.
How could it keep water out without keeping water in?

[Jim Becker]

Lowes or any "home center" probably isn't the best place to get advice on something like this... The product sounds like something intended for "sealing" end grain on construction lumber for things like outdoor projects, not "green wood" for things like turning blanks. Anchorseal, on the other hand is designed to slow moisture movement so that cracking from sudden moisture loss in the end grain of logs and green lumber as they are dried. As I mentioned earlier, you can use paraffin for this in a pinch, and it's really nice for turning blanks because it keeps them "greener longer" and many folks prefer to rough out green/wet, especially on hard species like Osage Orange.