Dealing with soft wood

[soligen]

I have some redwood burl - which is very light and soft. I'm concerned about it's durability. I put a couple coats of CA on it, and it helped some, but still pretty soft - can be marred pretty easy with a fingernail.

This is my first really soft wood. Will a full CA finish firm things up enough they it will be reasonably durable?

I'm planning a closed end FP, and I figure that the wood end will be a potential problem area.

All thoughts welcome.

Thanks

 

[Drstrangefart]

Before you turn, and during turning, soak the whole thing with thin CA. Apply it from the bottle a few drops at a time until it quits soaking anymore in. Let it dry as long as you can. If you use accellerator, it stays on the surface and doesn't do its job. I've done this with quite a few soft, unstable materials. It should help you out.

 

[robutacion]

Before you turn, and during turning, soak the whole thing with thin CA. Apply it from the bottle a few drops at a time until it quits soaking anymore in. Let it dry as long as you can. If you use accellerator, it stays on the surface and doesn't do its job. I've done this with quite a few soft, unstable materials. It should help you out.

This is a good piece of advice and I would complement it by saying that I work with lots of very soft, I mean soft wood stuff and I never had any problem with the final result.

There are many ways you can harden the blank before start working on it, stabilization, CA soaking, using wood hardener from the hardware store, etc., in any of these options I take the square corners of the blank out so use less soaking material and also help with the turning of the blank to round afterwards.

Drilling will fail if the wood is not harden to a certain point, then and while in the lathe, soaking with CA as ABOVE suggested and then using the "Flap" disc method to cut /shape the barrel right to the hand sanding stages. After that you finish it with CA as you would finish any other blank. Even if the material under the CA in not rock had, does affect the durability of the CA finish if it has some extra coats to compensate.

Hope this helps...!

Cheers
George

 

[ctubbs]

Dennis, you have already received good advice on soft wood. once you get a good hard surface on the finished material, it should hold well.
Charles