Using PR for stabilizing

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redfishsc

redfishsc

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Just out of curiosity, I have some maple burl and spalted oak that I'd like to give a shot at stabilizing with PR.

If I mix the PR, pour over the blanks in a mold, and pressurize to 60-80 pounds, will the PR harden the wood anything close to what professionally stabilized blanks are?
 
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If he doesn't see this, send an email to Karl Kuehn. He has had some luck with stabilizing the woods in his earth casts, etc. He can probably give you more info.

The key is likely going to be: Is the wood punky enough?
 
PR doesn't work too well for stabilizing. Wont absorb into the wood too well. With the worthless wood stuff, the PR doesn't soak into the wood all that much. It is mainly to fill the voids.
 
I wonder what resin would. I've thought about thin CA but I'm sure it will skin over on some of the blanks too quick.


I guess what's really needed is the extreme pressure, I'd have to guess several hundred psi, to get the resin forced into it.
 
There are other products that work well. That much pressure is not often talked about here. The most you will generally hear about is in the 80 or 90 pound range. Plus, some folks use a combination of vacuum and pressure to stabilize.
You should do a search on the subject before you commit to trying to use resin for the task. There are other, better solutions.
I do not stabilize, so I cant help too much. But others do it all the time and should be able to answer some of your questions.
 
I have been able to stabilize very soft punky Flame Box Elder with White Alumilite at 80 PSI. It pentrates the blanks (7/8" x 7/8" x 5 1/2) all the way through and they end up like a block of solid resin. The key is to make sure the wood you use is very porous. I have weighed the blanks before and after and stabilizing and the weight increases by aprox 3x...so this tells me there is plent of resin in the blank. I also tried it with the Clear Alumilite BUT the clear is a bit thicker and does not penetrate as deep.
Below is a link to one of my ads where you can see the final product (not making a sales pitch just showing the end result). As you can see although I used white resin the blank retained all the color except where it was missing pieces or had cracks. You can also color the white resin and then it wil alter the color of the blank. Hope this helps.

http://www.penturners.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=38245
 
If you want to try to stabilize your wood with PR you need to get some Styrene. Styrene is the thinner for Polyester Resin.

If I were going to try this I would go with one of the thinner polyester resins to start with like Silmar 249b, as it is made for laying up cloth and such, and it is crystal clear and can be pigmented. You add Styrene 10%-15% by volume.

I would then alternate vacuum and pressure. That is what I would try- if I were going to do this.

Let us know how your experimentation works out.
 
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