Last week I got a call from a lady wanting a barn beam mantel for her new house. Her special request was that I make it as” gnarly” as possible. So…I decided to make her the gnarliest ass mantel that I possible could.
I found a sweet chunk of oak that looked like it was a chew toy for a grizzly bear. This beam had beautiful, deep adz cuts and some exceptional character. It was a 10×10 well weathered beam that weighed a ton! I knew it would look great for her mantel.
This particular beam took a bit of work to get ready for stain. It was so gnarly and hard (oak) that I probably spent double the time working on it as usual. And I went through a truck load of sand paper. But, as they say, “no pain…no gain.”
The beam was stained dark (with our most popular stain color) and then coated with several coats of urethane. The final product was very nice and well worth the extra effort.
