Osmo Colour Oil used in ancient church wooden restoration

Osmo Colour Oil used in ancient church wooden restoration

You may think that Osmo colour oils are only useful for use on wood flooring, fact is it can be used in most situations. The famous Frauenkirche church in Dresden had it's seats stained with a honey colour. Here at real oak floors we can supply some of our wood doors unfinished which means you can finish them with your own colour choice.

The Frauenkirche in Dresden was built in the years 1726 – 1743. The building was in need of a total rebuild as it was destroyed during the second world war, even the wood flooring! It has taken many years to restore the church in fact well over fifteen years in fact with a sponsored investment of over 100 million euro's. The restoration project needed expert carpenters to bring it back to it's former glory, in the end over 80 carpenters applied for the job of restoring the church seats. Amongst those that applied was Sebastian Schultz an experienced carpenter from Chemnitz. In the end he got the contract as he had researched in depth the details of the original furniture. His research had found that regional fur from Saxonia and Bohemia has been used instead of Douglas fir as was specified.

Schultz knew why this fir wood was used. It was because the properties were ideally suited as they are light, making them rather easy to bend, have a low resin count and grow very straight. It also has an attenuating affect which reduces resonance.

For the job at hand Schultz and his team processed 400 cubic meters of fir wood which took them a total of three years to do.

The rampart totalled 1, 200 square meters and the seats totalled 3, 800 a total of 5, 000 square meters, all of which was hand-planed and finished.

Once the seats were constructed they were treated with products from Osmo. Eighty other samples from different products were tested before this procedure. Firstly the seats were stained a honey colour and then finished using Osmo Wood Wax. It took 25 cans each of which contained 25 litres to complete the job.

Maintenance wise the seats have only had treatment once in the last two years. Fact is Osmo maintenance products should be used once every three months in high traffic areas such as the church or any other high traffic area such as on an oak flooring.