All stabilized woods are not created equal....

[sachbvn]

So - I'm still real new at this turning stuff - I want some seasoned observations.


Stabilization..... I have used stabilized woods from Woodturningz with GREAT success..... they drill great - they produce odd textured chips, but drill wonderfully. It's coarse, but not like curls you get from acrylics.... almost like plastic sawdust (duh, it kind of is ).

Anyways - I was at a pen turners shin-dig last Saturday and this guy had BEAUTIFUL "exotics" for sale - dyed curly maple, Ambrosia Maple, all sorts of different grained stuff.... and not just a couple pieces - but stacks of this stuff. He also those maple burl/plastic resin combo blanks that look pretty neat.

I bought several dyed curly maples and a couple pieces of other figured maples - one was ambrosia. All supposedly stabilized, and I'll tell you - one or two (opposite) sides were shiny like glass, so it did appear to be stabilized - you know how they pour acrylics in sheets and then cut them? That's what this appeared to be. Now - my experience with woodturningz, it looks like every side has resin on it - keep this point in mind.


Anyways - drilling this stuff - it seemed more like wood chips than I was accustomed to - but, eh - whatever.

When trimming the first piece of curly maple - BOOM - split a huge chunk all the way down to the tube, totally ruined. Not repairable, the break was too nasty and some small pieces of wood chipped off too close to the final dimension.... because it is such a clear blue curly maple, the repair would be obvious....ok - oh well, 4 bucks in the chitter. MIND YOU - I was being very careful, I was not hogging away at it....literally - the cutter head touched the blank and it blew up.

I tried another curly maple - that one went find except like a dumb arse I mixed up the top and bottom.... my bad there. 4 more bucks in the crapper though I did give the barrels to a friend who makes beaded jewelry - she said she could use them. (Never thought of that, but they did look real nice and were finished great).

So I tried an ambrosia maple (supposedly stabilized) - it drilled ok, though more like wood than anything, and trimmed the ends ok - the tube was plenty dry after the glue up and so I started it on the lathe. From the get go - and mind you I had JUST sharpened my roughing gouge - it was awful tear out. I was babying it like nobody's business - it was so bad I didn't think it would ever get better after it was rounded - so I switched the tube, end for end (thinking maybe that would make a difference though it shouldn't) and went at it again. Well, back up - first I sharped the gouge again - still, this awful tear out. I keep working thinking maybe when fully round it will be better or I would man up and try the skew..... I never got the thing fully round - kept having huge chunks fly off - finally I got one end mostly round - sharpened the gouge and started again, boom - took a massive chunk off of it and that was the end of it - brass tube sticking out.

So... my question is this..... is this guy some BS operation or what? This was the chittiest experience with anything stabilized ever - woodturningz stuff turns like a breeze - keep the tool sharp and you'll produce chips, small, fine chips, but you'll get there.

I've used extremely spalted hackberry and tamarind from WT - stabilized..... so - is it the wood or the stabilization process?

If you guys agree that the stabilization is lacking, I almost want to email the guy and tell him his stuff was crap.

Thanks,
Zac

[TDHofstetter]

Was there a reason for the curly maple to be stabilized? Like... was it all punky or shot fulla' voids or something? I can't imagine any MEANS of "stabilizing" normal healthy curly maple 'cause it's already just about as dense as it can get. Now... DYED I can understand - it could be shot clean through with waterborne dye that follows them teeny tiny pores that the tree normally drinks through. STABILIZED I can't imagine.

"Stabilizing" is just filling voids & punky woods with resin. If the wood's still completely integral, there's no place to put the resin.

I've got a feeling the guy was chain-yanking, BSin'.

[Doug B]

You are correct that there are 2 distinctly different processes done to wood Zac - one is stabilizing like WoodTurningz does, and another is called casting which uses polyester resin (or something similar like Alumilite) to fill voids. Two very different things and for different purposes.

Spalted wood has started to rot, so it may need to be stabilized, wood with missing areas or voids can be "cast" in resin to fill the voids, but that will not necessarily stabilize the wood.

There are also different levels of stabilizing wood. Woodturningz uses heat and pressure to stabilize their wood. The "do it your selfer" at home is not likely to be able to duplicate that level of stabilizing, and may be doing nothing more than soaking the wood in Minwax Wood Hardener.

I had a local guy do some stabilizing for me using an acrylic and acetone solution and it was not as effective as my thin CA method, and the heat from the Woodturningz stabilizing was made my pine cones open up, so I may have to come up with my own home brew method one of these days.

But I was very impressed with the Woodturningz stabilizing they did for me on spalted woods.

One thing to try on the wood you have is to stabilize it yourself using some thin CA - it will soak in quite a ways in some woods, especially ones that need to be stabilized since they will usually really soak up the CA like a sponge. Just don't wear nitrile gloves while doing that

[triplefreak]

Short answer: You got hosed, my friend.
Not trying to be mean, either.

[TDHofstetter]

Apr 24, 2010 15:14:15 GMT -6 Doug B said:

I may have to come up with my own home brew method one of these days.

You got a vacuum pump, Doug? How 'bout a car that you can tap into for vacuum (intake manifold)? How about... a large Mason jar? A means of attaching a vacuum hose to the Mason jar? There's your rig.

Acetone & acrylic will do the job, but the vacuum needs to be pretty much immediate or it'll just boil off the acetone too fast. Pour the acetone/acrylic mix into the jar, drop your wooden stuff in with it, wrap the jar with a towel (just in case it implodes under vacuum - they'll accept deep vacuum about four times before they weaken), draw the vacuum down fast, hold it till the wood stops bubbling, then release the vacuum slowly. The acetone/acrylic mix will fill all the air spaces in the wood.

Neighbor used to do that with turquoise. Made all the difference between crumbly turquoise jewelry & smooth hard turquoise jewelry.

[Doug B]

Tim, that sounds pretty similar to what the local guy did. He used a pickle jar and a vacuum pump with the acrylic/acetone mix. It worked well for a ways into the pine cone, but I still had to use CA for most of the turning so it did not help as much as I had hoped.

I have gotten as far as buying the Harbor Freight paint pressure pot when it was on sale, but I have not gotten the connectors attached to hook it up to my compressor for the pressure. One of these days I'll get a round tuit

[TDHofstetter]

Ideally, it'll be combined with vacuum - if ya wanna' fill the wood with something else, ya gotta' get the air outta' the way first.

[Doug B]

I read somewhere that there is a venturi? vacuum that works off the compessor. I think they got it at Harbor Freight. Would that work? I'm gonna have to look into it again one of these days...

[autobodyman]

Apr 25, 2010 10:43:53 GMT -6 Doug B said:

I read somewhere that there is a venturi? vacuum that works off the compessor. I think they got it at Harbor Freight. Would that work? I'm gonna have to look into it again one of these days...

I looked at those venturi pumps for vacuming A/C systems, the CFM requirement was just to high for my air compressors.

My dad has an old electric pump he uses so for A/C systems I just use his.

How about one of those food vacum packers, I used that on a jar full of automotive clearcoat to pull it into some redwood burl, it worked pretty well though the clearcoat takes about 7 hours to cure and unless you want a block of clearcoat to dig threw you need to pull them out before it completely hardens.

~Mike

[sachbvn]

I emailed the guy and basically told him what I've found out and asked his opinion - but in the end I feel I got hosed on the $60 or more of blanks I purchased from him.


Zac

[TDHofstetter]

That does hurt...

[maxwellsmart007]

I think that there's a few people at the IAP who tried using a new 'commercial' stabilizing solution that was being advertised...and I think that a few people also found out that it didn't penetrate as well as they'd hoped.

I guess the solution might be to buy the blanks unstabilized, and do it yourself - either with CA, or some other method that you're comfortable with.

[sachbvn]

I emailed the guy earlier today and he has replied already. Skipping the details of his email - he said he completely stands by his work - he described his process for stabilizing and said that the process is considered the gold standard.

He offered a refund for the blanks - in fact, he asked me what I would like as a refund and offered to paypal it to me or send a check.

I emailed him back and told him that they seem like a small business type operation (not to be condescending) and that his offer to refund me was enough, and that I'll pass on the refund.

It was more important to me that he offered to make it right - and the biggest disappointment was not that I was out some money - it was that the wood was so dang beautiful! I'll probably be able to get something turned from these blanks and recoup my money.

Anyone interested in his process I can post what he sent me.

Zac

[maxwellsmart007]

actually, I'm quite interested in the 'gold standard' of stabilizing.... do you mind posting that, Zac?

[TDHofstetter]

I'd like to know, too...

...partly because I gave it some thought during a smoke break today & second-guessed myself. In my estimation, a deep vacuum should be drawn on the bare wood (no resins) and held there for some time while the internal air & moisture bleed to the surface. The moisture will boil off into vapor, which will be drawn up by the vacuum.

After some "soak" period in dry vacuum, the resin/thinner should be introduced quickly and the vacuum removed immediately afterwards to keep from boiling off the thinner. At that point, the container should be simply sealed so the thinner doesn't boil off and again the wood should be soaked - this time immersed in thinned resin. Last, the wood should be removed and the thinner allowed to boil off so the resin can set up.

That's assuming a non-catalyzed resin, which would want to be mixed immediately before it's added to the vacuum container & the wood be removed before the resin sets up.

[sachbvn]

This is a snippit of the email:

"First of all, regarding our stabilization process. It is in fact vacuum/pressure stabilizing using Resinol 90C as the medium. This product is considered by most to be the 'gold standard' of stabilizing solutions and tends to be the product most others compare themselves to. It is a thermo-set polymer requiring heat for proper curing."



Zac

[TDHofstetter]

Aha.

ironwoodknives.com/90C%20TDS.pdf

I'm not so sure it's well suited for wood... it may be OK, since the thermoset temperature is only 80C, but it's hard to say whether it penetrates well enough.

[Doug B]

Tim, you got some interesting thoughts there, and we will definitely have to re-visit this subject one of these days when I get some other things taken care of. I really need to find a way to stabilize pine cones...

[maxwellsmart007]

Resinol 90C was developed to seal "microporosity in metals" on an industrial setting, apparently - the 90C in the name is the curing temperature (90 degrees Celcius, or just below the boiling point of water)

This data sheet says that it is flourescent under UV light - could you then check the penetration by doing an end cut and using a blacklight?
tinyurl.com/resinol-90c-TDS

It's only the gold standard because it costs upwards of $100 a gallon, but it wasn't designed for woodworking. Perhaps too much water in the blanks caused unequal penetration? Or perhaps they were too dense? It's meant as a film coating on metal, I think...

I did a search at the IAP, and found this pen, which was made by soaking an LDL beam in dyed Resinol. As you can see, some parts of the pen accepted the solution, and others were too dense - maybe that's the issue - density of the wood?
www.penturners.org/forum/showthread.php?t=54404&highlight=Resinol+90C

[maxwellsmart007]

Apr 26, 2010 21:03:01 GMT -6 Doug B said:

Tim, you got some interesting thoughts there, and we will definitely have to re-visit this subject one of these days when I get some other things taken care of. I really need to find a way to stabilize pine cones...

What about ultraclear Alumilite, Doug? Alumilite's supposed to be pretty easy to work with, and no odoriferous olfactory emanations (unlike Polyester Resin)!