Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Preserving birch bark mantle

We're getting ready to install a nice slab of white birch as our fireplace mantle that still has the bark on one side. What is the best method of preserving it so it doesn't peel off?

Wife has been applying tongue oil to the bare sides but has left the bark alone until we find out how to keep it from peeling.

Super glue


Mike

...or bubblegum



Mike

Birch bark makes great kindling. Contact your insurance agent as to what you should use as a preservative.

Right, thanks for the help.

How old is it?

Tough deal for wood positioned immediately over a fire place. A lot of potential shrink/swell there. Might try this method.

Keeping the bark on

This mantle was kiln dried for 9 weeks and has been sitting in our garage for at least 3 additional weeks so there shouldn't be a whole lot more shrinkage to it.

Some people seem to think that this is a fire waiting to happen but that's far from the truth. The folks that cut and dried this piece make their living doing this stuff and making mantles is a huge part of their business. Our previous mantle was also made of wood and heat/fire was a non-issue.

Thanks for the link 1minute!

It seems like you're overlooking the most obvious experts.

Why dont you ask the folks that made it how to preserve it?

A call has already been made and we are waiting for a call back but I thought I would ask here to see what others had to say.

Our paper birch sucks as lumber. It moves a tremendous amount of "movement in service" and has strong tendencies to warp, twist, and crack. Seasoning is very important, especially for indoor uses where stability is important. Allowing the slab to sit for several years will reduce a lot of those stresses, but not all. A couple months is as nothing to birch...

Kiln drying concerns me far more than an air-dried slab would. Kiln drying rushes the process to save money "with an acceptable level of degrade" and nowhere in there is there any hint of actually improving any mechanical property of the wood.

The tung oil will do nothing for wood stability as wood coated with oil will actually absorb and release water vapor faster than bare wood.

The last birch bark mantle I made was done by hollowing the slab and gluing it over a plywood box with "engineered" stiffeners inside the box. It will never move and the joints are virtually invisible.

If the log was cut last fall the bark should be good and tight. If it was cut this spring it likely will cause you problems down the road.

Superglue carefully run along the bark edges will soak in and help hold the bark in place, but it should have been done before any finish was put on. Use the thin stuff, not the heavier or thicker formulations.

You can just put it up and monitor it carefully and glue it back as it needs it. A cardboard piece to protect the bark and duct tape wrapped HARD around the edge to hold the bark in place should be able to clamp the bark in place until the glue dries. It will likely require some water to soften the bark enough to get it to wrap back into place.

You could also use a tiny piece of molding around all edges and use tiny brads to hold it in place. It will protect the bark edge also without looking bad. You should be able to make it yourself from the edge of a thin birch board.

Bottom line is I would suggest you just hang it and address any issues as they come up... and hope it was cut last fall...

Since it seems that there is no real answer as to how to keep it from falling off, it looks like that is our best option and what we plan to do.

I am curious about a statement you made though, you said kiln drying is done to rush the proces and save's money. It certainly didn't save us any money and IMO was quite expensive.

How does it save money over simply cutting down a tree and letting it dry over a couple of years?

Because storing the lumber (covered) while it airdried has a huge cost to the lumberyard, in addition to the inventorying. It saved you a lot of money because if it was airdried and the lumberyard/mill intended to stay in business they would have had to pass those costs on to you.

Airdrying would involve monitoring the lumber and occasionally reracking it to reduce things like sticker-stain and ensure that anything going wrong in the rick is corrected before it takes more lumber with it. For example a board near the surface twisting would get moved to the bottom of the bunk so the wood above it would keep it in line while it dried.

You were being given the price choice between a carefully dried slab and a chunk that was likely green or at best unknown...

Actually, the superglue on the bark edge before finish is the best way to ensure it will stay, IF it was cut late in the season.

Wood actively growing just under the bark is thickest and weakest in early spring. Growth slows and the wood is stronger later in the year, holding the bark better. Through the winter is fine also... But come very early spring the sap starts to flow and "plumps" the cambium, weakening it.

I cannot imagine that it would cost more to store this piece of birch than what we paid for it but i've been wrong before.

According to my wife, she said it was cut in Feb.

That should remove a ton of concern for you... You likely need do nothing other than keep an eye on it.

Realize that if they just stack it once and leave it the value will drop to almost nothing. It requires work to produce decent lumber, especially from wood as unstable as our birch.

While Hemlock and not birch I essentially followed the same process Sitkadeer did when I built the mantle for our camp. I built a plywood box then bandsawed the hemlock into planks, air dried it and then epoxied them to the box. I've finished it with high gloss spray poly. It's held up well for three years but admittedly we have perhaps a dozen fires a year at the camp.

OT
But in AK I can't fathom having a fireplace. I also can't fathom not having a wood stove here as a backup at minimum.

That said, I can feel the ambiance of that fire here Allen!

ETA: Not a criticism of your choice John if you do have a fireplace. Just my own damn opinion.

When we flee Md to NH I suspect that we'll align with those views too! Right now it's weekend heat in WV so that works out well.