Thread: Wood stabiliser.

Gudday all you knifemakers.

When I was an apprentice back in the 90's I fancied the idea of making knives and read about a product used to stabilise wood scales. It was a liquid that the scales were submerged in, in a vacuum pot. After a period of time they were baked in a toaster oven to harden the resin. This process would add weight and waterproof the scales at the same time.

I'm looking at using this product on finished products (chopsticks & similar) so 2 pack epoxy would work but I'd potentially end up with excess epoxy to remove later.

Thanks in advance for your advice and input.
Al.

Cactus juice.
There is a company in Australia that imports it.
Not cheap but that is the closest place you can put you hands on.
I have tried a norsky product sold at bunning, it is a super liquid and slow setting epoxy resin made for re enforcing rotten wood. With a bit of epoxy thinner to make it more liquid. It is not too bad but not as good as cactus juice.

Thanks Friwi, that helped me find a local product https://www.resinart.nz/products/woo...r-knife-making that sounds a lot like Cactus Juice. Smaller container so that helps a lot as I'm only doing small stuff.

The pinecones are stunning visually when done with stabiliser.

Originally Posted by No good names left

Thanks Friwi, that helped me find a local product https://www.resinart.nz/products/woo...r-knife-making that sounds a lot like Cactus Juice. Smaller container so that helps a lot as I'm only doing small stuff.

I have used the resin art product and it is a reasonably good product. I prefer the cactus juice but I have used the resin art product with good results. Make sure to get a good vacuum on the fully covered wood and then a pressure pot helps with the infusion but make sure the wood is well covered as there is quite a bit of uptake.

Lol they use your photo for advertising.

Originally Posted by Micky Duck

Lol they use your photo for advertising.

I didn't know that but they did ask for review when I got a number quite a bit one time to try it.

Now I’m going to have to investigate, what the hell you are taking about it could be handy

Thanks for your help guys, more projects on the way for me I think. We get lots of visitors from Asia and I thought I'd get them to make their own souvenir chopsticks but most NZ timbers have such beautiful grain it's not that stable, this should help make it possible.
My wife hates that I can remember most of this article from the 90's but not what she told me last week.

A mate of mine in boatbuilding had some spare international everdure, which is a two-part clear low viscosity epoxy (yeah - that's a mouthful).

He mixed some up and thinned it some more with epoxy thinners, chucked it in an open top plastic bag with the timber part and into a pressure pot which he jury rigged up to the vacuum pump for fibreglass repairs. Kind of overkill, but it seemed to work very well. The chunk of timber drank all the epoxy and stuck itself nicely to the bag at any rate. I think that stuff - from the small number of times I used it anyway - has a ratio for the amount of thinning it can take for various temperatures and it's designed to stabilise wood for painting and moisture blocking purposes. You can get it in relatively small amounts and it's quite cheap in comparison to some of the specialist stabilising products from what I see? This project was to replace another surround on a part of the boat that always ended up covered in hydraulic oil just due to the old fashioned design of the parts - he got sick of replacing the oil soaked timber so made it solid effectively. If it handled that it should be good for anything else...