Waterproofing Wood

[Ruffsta]

Hello everyone,

I've just had a custom lid made for my new fish tank. It's made of wood and I need to waterproof it but I'm not sure of the best way to go about it. A few people have suggested yacht varnish but I'm not sure if it's toxic or not (I was told that if i used varnish I'd have to varnish alll sides but I don't want to change the colour of the wood on show if I can help it as it matches the rest of the furniture in the room).

The other idea I had was to maybe use some sort of material and line the inside of the tankl but i wouldn't know what to use.

Can anybody help? Any suggestions/ideas would be greatfully appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[waterdrop]

I would think most modern finishing materials would not age and chip off as much as they did years ago, but you might also try your question in the Hardware and/or tropical discussion groups in order to cast a wider net for some of the members who know wood-working.

Don't understand your sentence about putting anything down in the tank (?)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rooster]

Same as mine... I just painted the inside with a good brand gloss paint, the outside was also painted, but theres a MkII on the way which will be varnished on the inside, and bare wood on the outer.

(This hood was painted black - as I planned to paint the whole stand black... but we prefer the bare wood ! )

You will find a LOT of scaremongers on here - fact is, most (if not all) paints have to be child friendly, so they cannot be "dangerous" once cured.

 

[mark.w.jones]

Yacht varnish are you going sailing in your tank then? That's a bit over kill IMO. Just a couple of coats of regular varnish will be fine.

 

[wendywc]

So is the hood or lid made out of wood? If you don't have glass lids, used them and then put the hood over it (with no varnish needed).