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Opinions - Best Trailer Deck Stain/Coating?
Frogdog
Member Posts: 3,030 ✭✭✭✭
Hey, folks. Looking to benefit from your experience. Back in the spring, I picked up a Mastiff 7.5x12 ft utility trailer. Love it - built like a tank. Anyhow, I gave the new treated decking a few months to season, and now am ready to put a coating on the wood. What do y'all recommend for a coating? Some of the options I'm considering are:
1. Regular clear oil-based stain
2. A solid stain with sand between coats to give a "non-skid" type effect.
3. Some form of brush-on or roll-on bed-liner type material.
Anyhow, I'd welcome any general opinions/experience, or specific product recommendations.
Thanks!
- Frog
Comments
Used Thompsons Water Seal on mine twenty years ago. Still solid today.
Used motor oil and a drive up a good limestone gravel road on a dusty day.
I heard some folks use diesel fuel also. Not sure how it's applied, though.
Automatic Tranny Fluid, spear it on.
And that is only because the wood you have was before the worthless treated stuff that is used now.
Agree, that's how we've always reused used oil, pouring on flatbeds letting it soak into the wood (the slickness doesn't last long) and also poured over fence post tops letting it run down the post, some have lasted 60+ years and counting 😊
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
How do you apply the motor oil? And how does it not make your driveway a hazmat incident at the first rain?
We usually just roll it on with paint rollers, dip in the bucket or pan and let'er rip.......you don't have to drench it on, just cover it like a paint job, it will soak in. I don't have a paved drive way 😀 so that never concerned me but if I did I'd just find a different location to roll it on.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
Helped my father build a trailer using red oak lumber for the entire thing , runners , beams , crossmembers and flooring . We soaked it with motor oil as we were building it . This was in the middle 60’s as I remember . Finally scrapped it and junked it sometime in the late 90’s when the main breams began to rot . It was never sheltered always outside in the weather
Combination of diesel fuel, ATF, and hydraulic oil applied in splotches and allowed to sun cure. Wood trailer floors are a consumable.
Wouldn't that take awhile! Don
Some folks spear it on. Don
Asphalt based barn and fence paint.
As stated, either roll it on, or add a little diesel or kerosene and put it in a hand pump sprayer.
Used oil mixed with karosene.
Id check with paint suppliers, they have some excellent acrylic enamels that are tough to beat.
Keep in mind whatever you decide to put on you want it to soak into the wood to preserve it, not just a top coat covering it......hope that makes sense.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
Just curious..........soak it in oil or ATF???? seriously?
Oil is usually thicker. Soaks in slower,or have to work it in with a roller
ATF is thinner,soaks in faster and leaves a redish tint on new lumber.
Already mentioned, you can dilute either the oil or AFT using diesel fuel.