how much paint can a board hold?

[phil]

this much!
I count white, greeny beige, blue, pink, black, green, more white.. but maybe I am missing some.

This one i reclaimed from craigslist. It is wider than my other baseboards and had a serious cup to it. I wet the backside and got the paint off and it seemed to un-cup a bit. I laid it out on the lawn so one side will see some humidity and the other is in the sun. Ill see if it goes back a bit. once I get it more flat I can probably cut it down a little in width and length if I need to use it.. otherwise it's a nice knot free board that hasn't been seen in a long time. it'll sand up nicely. Luckily it was shellacked first. fun stuff
it looks a little burned but I dont 'think it is coming from my heat gun, it seems to already be there , maybe its just a stain from age.. I wondered if it could have already been stripped once maybe using a blowtorch, who knows. If I stick it though my thickness planer it'll be too thin in the middle. I'll use a belt sander.

[Olson185]

The bottom pic looks like something one would see hanging at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). You might want to consider cutting it, mounting it to a rusty gusset plate with a piece of rebar, and seeing how much you'd get at auction. Might pay for your next project. LOL.

[Manalto]

I see the beauty in it too!

[phil]

That board turned out to be a nice one. It was cupped by a good 3/4" over its 10 1/2 " width
Ten feet long.

After wetting the back and stripping the paint it reduced the cupping by half and then laying it on the grass for 24 hours took the rest out.

It might go back a bit but I can do the same and when it's nailed on place it should be ok

I guess it's quarter sawn the edges look like edge grain and the front and back don't show a flat grain pattern either.

[Manalto]

Can you identify the wood?

[phil]

It's fir. probably local. 150 years ago this place was dense bush, all giant fir trees , 200 years ago it was natives and they didn't even have the wheel yet. it wasn't invented. neither were chainsaws. Lumber mills were one of the first industries. If you go in the bush you can see all these huge trees hacked off ten feet from the ground. they didn't want that part. they skidded the logs out of the bush with horses. the gold rush brought a big influx from California, they had their gold rush earlier on. about 1885 the railroad came and that probably increased the production , anything before that had to be shipped. Once they got going the lumber was great as it was all giant fir and cedar. not just here but all the way up the coast. now we can't afford the stuff. it's too good to use for mcmansions but all our old houses are completely fir except maybe cedar shingles and roofing. there is lots of cedar here too.. nothing could be built or farmed without clearing land but with technology they managed to cut most of the virgin forest. it's a renewable resource they say,, but that's B.S, the second cut isn't the nice tight grain stuff. those huge trees hold the soil and they act like big water reservoirs. a few years back they had a bunch blow down in Stanley park. the problem is if you cut most down and leave a few they have a harder time taking the wind. they aren't designed to stand alone. I saw a house across from me literally get chopped in half by one. previously nature took care of it with forest fires and the stuff fell to the ground and rotted. so you can't really walk through the forest easily in it's natural state they used boats to go up any rivers they could. of course everything moved faster once the railroad brought machinery and better access to markets. they did have ships before that. now there is a lot of controversy because they want to pipe oilsands bitumen from alberta and put it on ships to china to be made into oil. natural gas too. that will bring giant oil tankers into our ports. also a lot of controversy about building another dam. we have lots of water, the dams make a lot of electricity. lots powers California. you can't store giant amounts of power easily so they send it back and forth and all over the grid depending on demand. Creating dams floods land so it isn't without a cost. Alberta is sitting on massive oil reserves the problem is it is mixed with sand so separating it has an expense, but as soon as oil prices dip they go to work. now they are low and that hurts Alberta's economy so they have seen some boom and bust but they aren't totally shut down either. the huge fire in fort McMurray was a pretty big disaster too. that's in the oilfields. It was a big forest fire too. houses there were crazy expensive, it was booming ,then the whole town burned down basically.. It won't permanently hurt the industry there. the oil prices slowed it down but they aren't going to forget where all that oil is. If someone invents a good battery it will change the car industry pretty quickly. I could see pulling into the gas station for a battery swap but I dont think they even have a standardized size yet. people make money in Alberta and buy these giant ford trucks to just haul their own asses around and as a weird status symbol. It's a pretty crazy world.. sometimes I'd rather just hide int he corner and scrape paint

[GibsonGM]

Nice board I usually don't get to see them stripped like that!

[phil]

I went at it with the belt sander last night for an hour. the darkened layer is quite thick. I might put it through the thickness planer or maybe just hand plane it a little to get to fresh wood with any consistency. what I might do is just take off what I need to to clean it up and then I might need to add some spacers to the back side to restore the thickness and re-cut the roundover.
although that board looked nice, I really needed to get all the paint off and by the time you get into sanding then there are light parts and dark parts until you get way down to undamaged wood. then it should be consistent but it thins out the plank.
if I use the thickness planer it's fast, it's really loud, it'll take 1mm off per pass or so. I like to get all the paint off or it dulls the blades and gums things up. It only makes things flat though so if there is some cupping it ends up thin. If I use a hand plane I can leave a little cupping in the board so I dont' loose as much material.

Im thinking of putting about a 3/8" spacer behind them all so I can later put wainscot without burying them. since this board is wider than I need it'll provide strips for some of the top edge spacers. the bottom edge you never see so it could be anything but the top one should match as best I can. later when I put the wainscot then you will no longer even see the top spacer. but I might not do the wainscot for a couple years so Ill finish it so it looks ok and that can be added.

Ill get to sanding the floors soon but I wanted to get some of the stripping done since it gets a bit tedious. Ill flip between that and something more fun.