Dear Egginbounce,
This is a tough question. As always it's a trade off. Depending on which product from Cuprinol is used, the benefits will range from nothing at all, to actual protection against water ingress.
If it's just an anti-rot product, it doesn't actually protect the wood from water, but rather from rotting when water is present. In that case, paint or wax, lacquer or epoxy, or something else you can come up with that acts as a barrier will do the trick.
If the Cuprinol product they use is forming a barrier of it's own, you need to check before applying things like lacquer or epoxy, but wax should be able to be applied no matter what.
I notice that MMC paints their wood these days, so my bet is that the Cuprinol is just an anti-rot, or to put it more correctly: It's a fungicide.
With regards to wax, I'd advise a thin flowing wax and applying it in as hot weather as possible or at least in a heated garage.
Remember that the wood needs to be warm, otherwise the liquid wax will become pretty solid fast. It takes quite a while before wood is heated, and you want it be able to seep down behind where you can't really apply it.
The wax can either be bougt already-liquid, or you can take your wax and heat it in a waterbath.
You can use ordinary wax, but I'm particularly fond of lanolin based products as they are natural and are very good at protecting metal as well. A couple of companies to check out is lanotec, lanocote and lanoguard.
Sincerely,
Lisa
(LOL, sorry I wrote it like that, but I really do think that lanolin-based products is great stuff).
Last edited by AQM; 05/03/11 07:03 AM. Reason: Added another product
