Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone have any ideas on what to use to finish off a wooden cage in black? Wood will be either birch or oak.
I want to polyurethane over it. I'd use piano finish, but I dont think you can over coat it.
And ebony stain isn't dark enough. Any ideas?
Oil finish is fine. I even prefer oil.
Sorry Chris...lol ( was gonna try the Polyureseal BP
You saved me from an expensive mistake.)

Bob,

Don't use oak for the main carcass of the cage. With all of its grain and texture an extremely dark finish does not look all that great. I have seen finishes where people have troweled plaster of paris into the texture, sanded it smooth, and then stained it really dark. This can look neat and would probably look neat inside of a snake cage, but I don't know much about it. The results also tend to be hit or miss.

If you really want oak you can build the cage's face frame out of it.

With even a lower quality birch plywood you'll have a much better surface for either paint or piano finish. You could try stain, but in this case is that birch laminated ply does not accept stain evenly and this looks bad with a darker stain.

I would instead look into a gel stain or aniline dye.

Regarding piano finish, I don't think you'd need a top coat of poly. I believe it's a durable finish on it's own.

Also, there are other paints that will likely give equal protection to an oil-based poly. Even if they are a little bit weaker they will be easier to touch up.

A semi-refular on this forum uses a black marine enamel over birch laminated ply in his cages. Let me try to think who that is.

Bob,

I believe the guy is Greg West who owns Cornelsworld Terrariums. He buys a marine enamel from a boat dealer up in Canada, if I remember correctly.

He posted some shots of a birch plywood cage painted with this stuff and the finish looked great. I could not find the picture on this site but here is one example of such a cage.

http://www.cornelsworld.com/pics/wallunit/john2.gif

I'm not sure if you can't find an interior oil-based paint that is equally or more durable. Marine enamel is designed to stay flexible and absorb UV light which actually reduces the moisture and abrasion resistance of the paint. This is the same reason why basic Minwax oil-based poly is more water resistant that Minwax Spar Urethane.

Another thought about your idea of using poly over a dark surface is that the poly will dry to that amber color that oil-based polys are known for. I'm not sure how good that will look over a super dark surface.