Except for adding 2 more sway braces, my benchwork is complete. It is a 4’ X 8’ L-girder layout with joists. Is it recommended to paint the benchwork to seal the wood, or am I just being compulsive? It is located in my basement, where in the summer it is always cools, and in the winter, it is always warm. It is the most neutral (temperature-wise) room / area in my home.
Just asking, any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Mike S.
If you decide to paint the benchwork, try to paint all exposed sides of the wood. If you only paint the front, for example, the backside can soak up moisture from the air and cause the wood to warp.
Don Z.
Thanks for replying Don. I was planning on painting the entire assembly, or nothing at all. I was told by an old carpenter many years ago, if you paint something once, you will ALWAYS have to paint it (garage floor, decking, etc.). I just think painting the benchwork will seal the wood, and give it a finished look. Once again, I think I answered my own question. I plan on having fascia cover half-way down, and skirting of some sort to floor. But given that the wood is pine, it needs to be sealed in some sort of fashion, and not left exposed. Just my thoughts, until someone talks me out of being obsessive-compulsive.
Mike
To quote Rex Roberts (Your Engineered House), “It is not necessary to paint wood in order to preserve it.” If you are planning to have your benchwork masquerade as furniture, by all means stain it mahogany, or cherry, or whatever matches the rest of your house. If, on the other hand, it will all disappear under scenery, why bother? The only thing that has to look pretty is the valence.
I’m in central Texas and in the garage. Humidity and temp swing greatly as we change from our only two seasons, hot and cold [:)]. I’m going to paint mine top to bottom and front to back because of the humidity.
I primed all my woodwork before assembling because I have a basement that can get damp (humid) during the warmer months. I also model in N-scale, and figure that even a minute shift could translate into track problems. My layout has been operational for four years now and not a hint of track issues. The only thing I wished I did was to put on a second coat of brown paint on top of the bench work to cover over the white primer. It would have made doing groundcover a little easier.
I wasn’t going to paint mine, but since the layout is in the family room, my wife insisted. So, I let her paint it. [:D] No, really!
Did she paint it to match the rest of your furniture, or do you have nice, pretty pink or mauve benchwork? BTW, what the heck is mauve anyway?
I don’t know about all of this? All’s I can relate are some questions/observations.
Do they paint the 2X4s in your walls and attic?
Do they paint the inside of your kitchen cabinets?
Do they paint the inside of your bathroom vanity and towel cabinets?
Seems like these areas would have about the greatest extremes in heat/cold/humity in your house and they don’t get painted. So it may be a gallon of paint v a bag of trees. Fred
Nah, she took some dark-colored stain, and then a coat of polyurethane. Looks pretty good actually. Nothing in the family room matches anything else. That’s where all the furniture ends up when another room gets “upgraded.”
I think “mauve” is what you get when you take pink and weather it with an India Ink wash, a little rust and brown chalk, and some Dullcoat.
There are other options, such as sanding sealer or wood hardener. They are clear or at most slightly darken the wood.
My original boyhood layout – OK we are talking circa 1961 here – was two sawhorses and a 4x8 sheet of 5/8" plywood (WAY better quality than you’ll buy today by the way) braced with 1x4 pine. The layout track came down went I went to school in 1970 but the train table stayed up, holding household “stuff”
Last year to close out my mom’s estate I have to dismantle it and I found that all the wood, unpainted, seemed to be in perfect condition, after 45 years in a damp basement, EXCEPT for the 2x4s that were part of the saw horses. They had rotted to the point where you could drive a screw driver into the pine. At some point perhaps shellac or wood hardener would have helped retard the process
But again – they were still holding the table up. So in retrospect, I guess my experience is that you can get decades of use out of unpainted wood, even in a damp environment, without painting. If there is a reason to paint or stain it is cosmetic.
Dave Nelson
Actually my point in priming/painting the wood is not to preserve it long term; rather it’s to prevent the wood from swelling in a way that would affect my track work. In most cases, exposed lumber in structures that swell in humid conditions will have little effect on anything else around it because it won’t move enough. However, MRR track work (particularly smaller scales) can be affected by the slightest of swelling.
I painted my benchwork purely for cosmetic purposes. It will be a long time before I completely fini***he layout. Having the benchwork and the legs painted ( a very dark grey) gives it a bit of a finished appearance. I plan to put a black skirt underneath, as well. Now I am not so overwhelmed by how much is not done because of all the bare wood. It’s a psychological thing, but it works for me.
My benchwork is nearly 15 (oh my) years old, and unpainted. I’ve never had a problem with it expanding enough to mess up the track work.
I live in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where there are two seasons, bone dry winter, and dripping humidiity summer.
Nick
I’ll throw in my 2 cents here, speaking as both a model railroared and a professional carpenter. Wood, being a naturally porous cellular material, will always expand and contract with changes in the ambient humidity. The questions in front of you are really: 1) how much will it change and; 2) does this matter.
The amount of expansion and contraction depends on lots of factors. These include: the species of wood, the moisture contect when the structure was first built and the amount of air that is able to circulate around the wood (to name just a few.)
And now for the tricky part- does this matter? If you build a new house and the rafters shrink and swell- so what. The amount of change relative to the entire structure is negligable. But if you are building a custom dining room table a gap of even 1/32" looks bad.
As a rule, any field-applied sealer (paint, solid-body stain, wood sealer, etc.) must be applied to all faces of the wood prior to assembly. This is the reason that architects often specify back-primed material. This prevents moisture from entering the un-treated face of the wood.
I model in N-scale, where even a small gap can wreck havoc on the track’s operation. I build my bench work using pre-primed, finger-jointed 1x4 pine (finger-jointed stock is made up of small pieces that are machine mated together & glued at the joints. It remains very stable regardless of the relative humidity. It is available from most lumber yards and home centers.) Then I prime all the cuts before assembly and then glue and screw all wood-to-wood joints. To make sure that the track’s sub-base stays stable, I next glue extruded foam insulation board onto the framework, as this material is stable- it will neither expand nor contract. My cork roadbed is glued onto the foam and my track is glued onto the cork. When I’m all done I apply a fascia of 1/8" Lauan plywood and paint the face of the fascia. Is this over kill? Perhaps, but I haven’t had any proble
I’d only clear shellac any part that shows, like the legs.
One word,…NASTY!!![xx(]
I have to concur with redmountain. One of my other past times is small boats. Wood boats, when first put in the water after being stored ashore, leak like seives for a couple of days until the wood planking swells enough to be water tight. The better the paint job, the slower the adjustment process is. Conventionally built wood boats cannot be successfully sheathed in fiberglass because of the swelling and contraction. The swelling even happens to some extent with plywood that is not sheathed in fiberglass.
If you live in an area that has extensive humidity swings (and no air conditioning) you will see the same effects in wood floors and furniture if you look for it. Painting and sealing dramtically slows the rate of moisture content change, but does not stop it. In many environmental conditions, the paint/sealer slows things enough that the swelling/contraction is no longer noticeable.
The impact of wood swelling/contraction depends on the layout’s environment and how the wood is used. If you have a humidity-controlled environment, painting is probably unnecessary. If you have an unheated/uncooled garage layout in most all coastal and many inland regions of North America, you MAY encounter changes significant enough to throw your trackwork out of whack with unpainted wood. Precision trackwork with soldered joints will be most affected. Sectional track mounted on a “giving” roadbed like cork is least likely to be affected.
Painting benchwork is a preventative measure that you will never know for sure whether it actually prevented a problem. To me, not seeing my trains seek their lowest point of equilibrium (aka the floor) is worth the extra time to paint the benchwork. 
my experience from 50 years of moving every 3-5 years, your opinion may vary
Fred Wright
Thanks everyone for your responses. After reading through the responses, it seems to me that painting / staining the benchwork won’t hurt it, and could only help it. I thought about it all day at work today, and I actually am in favor of staining it instead of painting it. I figure as long as staining it won’t actually hurt the wood (causing warping over time), then why not make it look nice.
Flee307: No on the wall studs, but yes on the inside of the cabinets – both kitchen and bathroom. Of course. And they aren’t going to be flooded with water during the scenery and ballasting process like your layout benchwork. I varnish everything top and bottom, inside and out. At least two coats on top where the moisture from the ballasting and Sculptamold will be going. I’ve seen layouts that had to be redone because the plywood delaminated on top. Hard to keep track aligned when it is just glued to a 1/32" bubble of veneer.