I went to a craft fair once and met a guy who carved walking sticks.

Really nice work. I had made one or two myself as a kid and asked him how long he aged the wood.

He said "no ageing required".

Finally I got him to tell me how he keeps the wood from cracking and twisting.

It's genuine old-fashioned varnish. He said that polyureathane is no good for this. And Shellac, no good either.

A Spar Varnish might be best. It's getting hard to find any other kind of regular varnish rather than synthetic poly-ureathanes.

You can even strip the bark right off the green wood and then seal it with varnish. This holds the moisture inside the wood so it won't dry and twist.

And that moisture is essential to the strength of the wood.

I found some Apple trees on a discard pile at my neighborhood orchard.

Some of the trees had been in that pile for about ten years. I threw the biggest trunks in my truck and took them home for burning in my grill.

The wood had lain in that pile, not touching the earth, for all those years. And when I began to chop it up it shattered like glass !

I did a little test. I took a regular claw hammer and smacked the trunk.

It took about three hits to snap a 5 inch thick trunk in half.

If the moisture hadn't dried out of the wood it would have needed a 90 ton press to do that.

Build your project out of green wood and immediately slather on the varnish.

Don't leave it even overnight or it will begin to warp.