# Masonite question



## Brendan (Jan 12, 2008)

I recieved my copy of Jack Verducci's "Structures for Your Garden Railway" yesterday. A great little book heaps of ideas. However my ears pricked when I read he uses Masonite as a shell for board and battern structures.
I was wondering how this stood up to outside conditions and what could you use to weather proof it. Masonite is easy to work with and it's cheap but I have my doubts re it's ability to cut the mustard outside. 
BTW the book tells me to refer to the Materials Chapter re Masonite. But there is no Materials Chapter.


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## Dave F (Jan 2, 2008)

I use masonite as the "sleleton" in a few of my buildings. I don't leave them out all the time though. They spend the occasional night out but they don't sit out all winter. 

I'll build a shell of the building, four walls and roof, then "laminate" on the exterior... lap siding, corrugated metal, sheet goods, whatever is needed for the look I'm going for. I use so much epoxy or construction adhesive putting that stuff on that I'm certain that the masonite is completely sealed off from the elements. Of course I put on a thick layer of Thompsons Water Seal when I'm done most of the time too.. 

So far so good. If I start to see issues, I'll let ya know. 

I'm starting a new building right now (today).. I'll start a thread on it and try to post pics and vids as I go. 

DF


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## Richard Weatherby (Jan 3, 2008)

"Masonite" is a registered trade mark and a product in the class of fiberboards. Some hardboard products can withstand exterior exposure and some CAN NOT. Some are tempered and some are not. There are other types know as medium density fiber board. There are products with phenolic resin glues and molded fiberboards which will last outside. There are products which are used for siding and trim. BUT I do NOT know of any under the Masonite brand. I have seen pressed fiberboard bathroom doors delaminate. I don't think the term "Masonite" should be used generically any more than "Formica" or "Styrofoam." These are specific products and are not generic. If it ain't blue it ain't Styrofoam. A very poor choice of words.


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## hawkeye2 (Jan 6, 2008)

I was working as a carpenter in the late 60's and we built a house using Masonite siding. It ws preprmed and was laped to look like wide clapboards. Our painter did the outside with exterior latex on a Friday and as we were getting in the truck it started to rain. When we returned on Monday the house was white primer with blue highlights and the ground around was blue. Another paint job and no rain and the last time I saw the house it still looked good. The only thing negative that I remember was that if you had to drive a nail through it you had to drill it or you might break a piece out. I don't remember (can someone help?) how it was attached bit there were no nails exposed when finished.


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By hawkeye2 on 01 Jul 2010 06:21 AM 
I was working as a carpenter in the late 60's and we built a house using Masonite siding. It ws preprmed and was laped to look like wide clapboards. Our painter did the outside with exterior latex on a Friday and as we were getting in the truck it started to rain. When we returned on Monday the house was white primer with blue highlights and the ground around was blue. Another paint job and no rain and the last time I saw the house it still looked good. The only thing negative that I remember was that if you had to drive a nail through it you had to drill it or you might break a piece out. I don't remember (can someone help?) how it was attached bit there were no nails exposed when finished.


My house had Masonite siding. The boards were 11" wide and uniform thickness... well..."Thick" is a poor choice of words... not all that "thick"... 1/8" maybe. Yet once on the house the look was as if it were 1/2" thick. The bottom edge was held out from the board below by a factory installed metal "Z" strip. The Masonite had a groove (dado? saw curf? knife slot?) in the lower edge that the "Z" fit into. The "Z" strip had holes every 3 or 4 inches for condensate drainage (and homes for tiny spiders). The upper edge of the Masonite fit into a "C" bend in the corner of the back edge of the "Z" strip on the board above. The cladding was applied from the top of the wall, down. A starter strip was nailed just below the soffit and then the top board was put in place against it and the "Z" strip on the lower edge was nailed down. Then the board below it was pressed into the "C" bend and it's "Z" strip was nailed down. At the bottom a 2-inch wide Masonite board was nailed to the sill plate of the house frame. Only the nails in the bottom strip were exposed to the weather.

Any moisture that got behind the siding (remember them drain holes?! Did you know that spider webs act like a wick?) would bleed through the Masonite and lift the paint right off the surface. The only "Primer" I could find on the stuff was a clear coat of something like varnish and was not all that impervious to water. Oil based paints worked lots better than Latex. After moving in we decided it needed painted (a change in color), I learned from a nearby house owner (My Wife liked the color of his house, so I had to ask him where he got it) that I had to sand the house really good to remove the multiple layers of Latex that had been put on over the years trying to get a coat that would stay put. Once I put the oil "House and Barn Paint" (Sherwin Williams, I think, or maybe Glidden... it was over 30 years ago!) on the bare, sanded (roughed up) Masonite, it stayed very well. Paint on any place I didn't get sanded down to the Masonite would still flake off in a year or two. I lived there 25 years and once I had sanded every square inch of the siding (over about 5 or 6 years) I didn't need to paint the siding again (except for repair, and "fashion"







! )

The only other problem I had with it was if it got struck hard enough to bend/crush the "Z" strip and break it out of the slot in the bottom edge of the boards. Getting it back in was a real pain. But since I could not find the material anywhere to purchase replacement, I spent a lot of time straightening "Z" strips and fixing boards with epoxy one time when the kid ran his bicycle head-on into the back of the house. Had to take a lot off to get it all put back on.


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## hawkeye2 (Jan 6, 2008)

C. T., thanks for the description of how the siding was applied. I have been trying to remember since I typed the reply but couldn't, 40 years is a long time. We never repeated the experiment and used vinyl siding which was a new concept at the time on the next house. It was a lot of work installing the Masonite and I can see from your post why it never became more popular. Masonite is great to work with in some applications and I like it for a base to build a structure on if it is going to be placed on an open grid indoor layout. Some of the folks on this forum use it for outdoor buildings with very good results, see a current thread and I wouldn't hesitate to use it. I would use a filler on the joints and an oil base paint rather than laytex to seal it.


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

Our garage in Eldorado Township had big heavy masonite clapboards. It was quite old and needed painting, so Susan took it off and put vinyl siding. Except for the faded red paint, the stuff looked brand new. We stacked it in Mort's shed that he didn't use any more figuring she might use it in a remodeling project some day. Much to the boy's dismay, Mort had even sold his "H."


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