What do the Amish use to preserve wood?

The Amish use simple, natural, time-tested methods to preserve wood rather than modern synthetic chemicals, focusing on natural oils and careful craftsmanship. The most common preservative they use is boiled linseed oil, sometimes mixed with turpentine or mineral spirits to help it penetrate, which nourishes wood, brings out grain, and provides mild water resistance while remaining natural. They also use tung oil, which is a harder drying oil that penetrates deep and hardens, offering better water resistance for outdoor furniture and cutting boards. For outdoor structures like barns, fences, and sheds, they traditionally use a mixture of linseed oil and pine tar or a homemade stain of linseed oil, beeswax, and natural pigments. Beeswax and a blend of beeswax and mineral oil is used for indoor furniture to polish and protect. For barns, they often leave wood untreated to naturally weather to silver gray, which itself is a form of preservation, or they use whitewash made from lime. The Amish also emphasize proper wood selection, using naturally rot-resistant woods like white oak, cedar, and black locust for outdoor use, and good construction techniques that allow wood to breathe and shed water, which preserves wood longer than any chemical.