SHOU SUGI BAN
So you might be asking yourself, what is Shou Sugi Ban? Have Jeff and Nancy finally gone off the deep end and decided to move to Japan? The answer to the first part of the question is we jumped in the deep end years ago! The answer to the second part is no ... we are just expanding our sustainable practices to an international scale. Shou Sugi Ban originated in 18th century Japan as a way to treat cedar siding to make it weatherproof. The basic steps of Shou Sugi Ban involve charring, wire brushing and then oiling the wood. Charring the wood reveals clean, distinct lines and an inherent textural beauty. For our build it will serve to break up the mono-colored walls and provide a ground to soffit accent for the windows. Plus it was a fun DIY project for us to do!
Keeping with the sustainable theme, we used some of the left over Ponderosa Pine planks we used for the ceiling and soffits of the house and casita for this project. In addition, we re-purposed some of the slats with live edges, that were used to separate the planks during transport, for our exterior window sills. We perfected our technique on the slats before we moved on to the planks. The first step in the process was to char or burn the wood. To accomplish this Jeff used his propane torch. It took a couple of test burns to figure out exactly how dark we wanted the wood but he figured it out.
Jeff does some burning
A close up of the burning
A batch of charred slats
The next step in the process involved brushing off the char that was created from the blow torch. This revealed the true personality of the wood as the end grains burn slower than the face grains which allows for the different colors. We experimented with both a wire brush and a plastic brush and in the end went with the plastic brush as it took off a little less of the char. Ray, our architect is the one that suggested the idea of incorporating Shou Sugi Ban in our build and was on site to help us during our initial experimentation with the process.
Ray taking his turn on brushing the slats
Once the brushing is complete you need to clean off all the char before you can apply the oil. The easiest and most efficient method is to use an air compressor. Lucas, our foreman, was nice enough to loan us his air compressor. This made the cleaning go much faster!
Once the wood was clean it was time to apply the oil. There are myriad types of oil one can use but we went with an environmentally friendly linseed oil.
Nancy applying the oil
Happy to be contributing to the build!
Window sills drying
In order to increase our Shou Sugi Ban output we needed to build a couple of saw horses. The crew gave us some pointers and we were off! Nancy even got to use the nail gun!
Nancy getting familiar with the gun
Nancy doing some nailing
Nancy testing the finished product
On our way out to the property to do some more Shou Sugi Ban we made a quick U-turn to save this guy that was trying to cross the highway. It wasn't too appreciative of our efforts but we felt better knowing it was safely across the road and headed into the bushes. Gila Monsters are the only poisonous lizard in North America but if you end up getting bit by one that means you did something wrong. Their teeth are very small and they would have to gnaw on you for a while before anything would happen. This one was about 18 inches long.
A local Gila Monster
When we started working on the larger planks that will run vertically both above and below the windows we erected a sun shade. Our friends Lucky and Jen loaned us theirs as you might remember ours took a ride in a dust devil while we were stacking bales. We developed a pretty good system where Jeff did the burning and brushing while Nancy did the oiling (in the shade 😉.)
Oiling station in the shade
As we progressed with the Shou Sugi Ban we decided we didn't want the wood too dark so we did a little less charring and more brushing.
Some finished planks
Shou Sugi Ban really brings out the grains in the wood
Nancy sitting on our courtyard rock contemplating the build
Once we had some slats and window sill pieces finished, Lucas hung a couple of the sills to make sure our plan would work. He also cut and hung 1" angle iron pieces vertically on either side of the windows to act as plaster stops. We don't plan on hanging the planks until the plaster is complete as we want to limit any staining of the planks from the lime.
Lucas cutting the window sills
A close up view of a live edge Shou Sugi Ban window sill
1" angle iron plaster stop looking from the plaster side
1" angle iron plaster stop looking from the window side
