Sealing the Grow Room

My Buddy Bean and I worked on sealing parts of the Space10 Grow Room for the Deer Creek Intermediate School in St. Francis. For those that might not be familiar with this project that Bean and I are working on, Peter Graven got in contact with me because of my access and CNC skill set. He saw Space10 Grow room online and immediately wanted one built for his classroom. After getting him in contact with the higher ups at Betty Brinn, I got the ok to cut the pieces as long as this project would be displayed at Maker Faire this year.

No problem!

The actual machine time took approximately 13 hours for 13 sheets of plywood.

Once all the machining was done, it was time to put a sealer on the boards. I had to watch my parents dog awhile back which gave me plenty of time to devote my full attention to this project.

I started to apply an oil based sealer on just one side of all the pieces and letting them dry in the partly sunny day.

More pieces drying...

This was the Oil-based sealer that I was using for this project, but I think now is the perfect time to fill you all in on the draw backs to this product. This sealer was meant for decks and fences not for the type of thing we were making. It was also a partly sunny, humid day which made this product dry incredibly slow. In fact, this sealer was a nightmare to use because it was drying so slow, when it started to rain I had to pull the pieces inside the garage, and I moved them outside the next day they were still wet. And I kept moving them inside and outside over the next two days after applying it just for the sealer to finally dry. At this point all of the pieces were covered in pebbles, dust, and grass clippings.

I would like to make a distinction here, this product is not bad, everything that happened to me could have been avoided if I read the directions more carefully before starting this project. Read ALL instructions before using, and check the relative humidity in your area before applying the product so you don't run into problems like I experienced.