I was contacted by a friend who has a piece of mountain laurel that has several voids in one end ( I wish I had a picture but all he sent was a video of the blank). He has asked if I could fill the voids with Alumilite resin. What I need to know is do I need to stabilize this piece first to remove moisture or can I stick it in a toaster oven for a few hours at low temp to get the moisture out? OR, can I just take it as is and pour some Alumilite in and put it in a pressure pot?
Filling Voids in Laurel with Alumilite
- Thread starter lhowell
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terry q
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I put dry blanks in a toaster for 24 hours at 200 degrees to get the moisture content to zero before stabilizing. Remove to an air tight container until cool before stabilizing. Can't help with the Aluminite process.
Terry Q is right about the heat/temp/time, etc. A bit of further info...after heat you have a dry piece of wood. Absent stabilization, it begins to reabsorb moisture from the air. Hence, you need to quickly remove the piece from the over, place it in a ziplock or other airtight container and then when it cools, begin the stabilization process.
Alumilite - it does NOT like water/moisture of any kind. You will get foaming...sometimes just a bit and sometimes like a washing machine has been overfilled with detergent! It's never pretty. Also, with moisture, the Alumilite will NOT bond with the wood. Hence, the strong recommendation to Stabilize. There are some types of wood that you can drop into your casting that are already dry and don't stabilizing, but thats the subject of a different posting.
Alumilite - it does NOT like water/moisture of any kind. You will get foaming...sometimes just a bit and sometimes like a washing machine has been overfilled with detergent! It's never pretty. Also, with moisture, the Alumilite will NOT bond with the wood. Hence, the strong recommendation to Stabilize. There are some types of wood that you can drop into your casting that are already dry and don't stabilizing, but thats the subject of a different posting.