I burnt the wood with a propane torch. No stain. I don't think it was spruce
I love what you did with that!!
I've built a couple tables/benches and am about to build yet another, I have a bucket of paint that I intend to tint darker to put on as a charcoal-ish color *but* I heard about this idea of burning to protect it (haven't verified if it actually protects, though it certainly looks cool!), a friend mentioned it and after going online I found it's 'shou sugi ban', am very interested in anything anyone knows about how well this preserves wood! I'm about to build my largest, nicest bench and, instead of painting everything a uniform color, I'd *much* prefer the
look of it if I power-washed and then burned it (I've done a trial-section with my generic propane torch, it came out awesome the wood just takes to this treatment real well!), I'm just unsure how well it protects/preserves/'weatherizes' the wood relative to paints...