Finishing stabilized wood

JDM- what is a "slip coat?" I know that super glue is CA and from this thread I see the difference between poly (topcoat) and CA which goes into the wood. I don't know that epoxy would sink in much farther than poly.

What Burl Source says about filling the pores and having the grain/finish "pop" is very true. That is what getting wood wet does when it is dry. It makes the contrasts and parts more apparent and visible. If I want a finish to really pop I go for a wet sanded high gloss level finish. Do a semi gloss finish or satin and you just don't get the same pop and visual. I often sand when putting oil on open grained wood for the slurry and filling that happens like Burl Source said. But in the types of woodwork I do I always finish off with poly or lacquer clear coats to pop the grain and protect the wood.
 
A coat of paste wax, thoroughly rubbed in and then buffed is a very good way to finish stabilized wood.
Properly stabilized wood should not absorb oils and such.
 
I guess my question about using epoxy or super glue should have been why would you use a "finish" not designed for use on plasticized wood? Also, does the stabilizing process not seal up the pores? I personally use a multi step London style gunstock finish for my natural woods that require a finish like maple and walnut. Think a super charged version of Tru Oil.
 
Bill DeShivs said:
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Properly stabilized wood should not absorb oils and such.
Click to expand...

What he said. I have a process that I setup for stabilizing and if you achieve 100% penetration there's no way oil finish will be absorbed.

Tru-oil polymerizes and becomes a top coat
 
I get what you are saying Ygami and Bill. But I also know that when I wet sand lacquer clear through 2000grit and then use fine cut polish and swirl remover I get a great glass finish for the most part. BUT get out the wax and rub a coat of that on and there is always just a bit more that it gets. I think it is filling microscopic marks and doing the final levelling to get the best I can get.
My guess is this is what is happening with tru oil and stabilized wood. You sand/polish to a certain point and then the tru-oil or other oil does the last bit of filling the pores and giving you the final bit of pop.
I think we could debate if it is a top coat or if it is filling the tiny voids like we could debate the same thing about wax.
But think about it. You can get your car paint job looking pretty nice but it always pops a bit more when you wax it.

When I started this thread I was more worried about what would adhere and be durable. This has been a fascinating discussion.
Randy
 
My view is you can use whatever you want to use as long as you're not building up a thick coat on the surface. I do like to put some wax and buff when I'm done.
 
There are a bazillion folks that have way more experience with stabilized wood than I do... but since Mark posted my photo, I'll post some of my thoughts.


jdm61 said:
I guess my question about using epoxy or super glue should have been why would you use a "finish" not designed for use on plasticized wood? Also, does the stabilizing process not seal up the pores?
Click to expand...

In my experience, the short answer would be "no".

First off, my soul rebels a little bit at the term "plasticized". I can tell you outright, if I sent a block of beautiful wood off to K&G or WSSI and got back a block of wood-looking plastic, I would never send another piece out to be stabilized again. Now I know that the wood absorbs monomers and acrylics (plastics) as part of the stabilizing process... but what comes back is anything but a uniform block of plastic.

Stabilized wood is funny stuff. Based on my experience, this is how I visualize the stabilizing process:

  • Real wood has grains, right? It has voids, tubes, tunnels, texture and pits (to use my highly scientific vernacular). It has all of these thing even when freshly cut and wet.
  • During the wood drying process (the year or more of waiting), what happens? Hopefully, if the drying process is managed properly, we don't end up with cracking. What does happen, however, is that water migrates out of the wood. When I visualize freshly cut wood, I imagine water being held both: (1) within the cells of the wood and (2) in the interstitial pathways {vessels} of the wood. Water can drain relatively quickly from the vessels of the wood... but it takes time and patience for water to migrate out of the cells.
  • Professional stabilizing companies will not accept wood that is not adequately dry (usually sub-10% moisture content). They do this becuase the intent of stabilizing is NOT to fill the voids/vessels with acrylic, but to replace the water within the wood cells.
  • As mention earlier, fluid (be it water or un-cured acrlyic) can drain from vessels and voids quickly... but takes a long time to migrate out of the cell structure. What this means for the stabilizing process, is that the liquid acrylic will drain from the voids and vessels before curing... but will cure in the wood cells themselves.
  • Practically, this means that stabilized wood is NOT a solid block. It will frequently have open grains, pits, voids and other texture. If you submerged, it will absorb water. Test it. Weigh a stabilized block... submerge it in water for 10 minutes... then weigh again. It will be heavier. However, since the cells are now filled with acrylic, the water will primarily be absorbed into the veins and voids of the wood. It will drain away relatively quickly, and with little (to no) detrimental effect on the wood. This is what makes stabilized wood awesome.
All that being said... when finishing most stabilized woods, there are still voids, grains, pits and other textures that can benefit from an oil (or other type of) finish. Stabilized open-grain woods will still absorb oil.



Bill DeShivs said:
A coat of paste wax, thoroughly rubbed in and then buffed is a very good way to finish stabilized wood.
Properly stabilized wood should not absorb oils and such.
Click to expand...

I disagree that properly stabilized woods should not absorb oil. I primarily use woods stabilized by K&G and WSSI... companies considered to be the top of the heap... and (to varying extents, depending on the type of wood) most DO absorb oil. Exceptions to this would be dense, oily woods that wouldn't typically benefit much from stabilizing in the first place.

:thumbup:I agree 100% with a top-coat of paste wax. I think it's a great idea, and will typically treat entire knives (handle, blade and fittings) with a coat to seal and protect.


Erin
 
Erin Burke said:
However, since the cells are now filled with acrylic, the water will primarily be absorbed into the veins and voids of the wood.
Click to expand...

The acrylic actually absorbs the water, how much is dependent on the chemistry of the stabilizer The entire point of stabilizing the wood is to fill in the water transport lumens. The Handbook of Wood Chemistry and Wood Composites(specifically chapter 16) by Imbach and Rowell shows SEM micrographs of the lumen transports pre and post stabilization. If your taking on more than a gram in 10 minutes, get another supplier. My testing on ash showed 2.2 grams in 30 minutes.

You may lose a little in the pores but even then it should be within the shallow surface. Machining will probably damage and rip out the material in the pores if you cut past that, however you should be able to sand back to 100% fill.

37x magnification on my little binoscope shows the acrylic clear enough in cherry using the proper lighting. A rough turned taper shows voids at the surface (and some cool acrylic/wood fiber spider webbing) however turning the test piece to inspect the shoulder (the turning was done with a thin parting tool on a CNC lathe to establish a clean shoulder) the wood is still at 100% fill.

I used to produce stabilized wood socket chisel handles and my engineering background overwhelms me some times. I did years of experimenting with this stuff.
 
Yugami: When you put wood in water for 30 minutes than saw a 2.2 gram increase of weight - how much of that weight was actually absorbed "into" the wood vs being on the surface and not yet dried? OR - did you make sure the wood was dry on outside before weighting post water soak?

Perhaps a good test would be to dunk wood in water, dry surface with rag, record weight, then soak wood in water for 30 minutes, then dry with same type of cloth trying very hard to wipe dry same way, then weight and see amount of difference?

Ken H>
 
The samples were 1x1x5 and sanded smooth through 320 grit. Microscope examination (though not 100% of the surface) showed 100% penetration at the surface of the samples post sanding.

2 tests were conducted - 6 samples were tested in both ash and cherry (these were the best woods I had on hand to act as large and small pored woods). Samples were stored in the house for 30 days to ensure conditioning to ambient conditions.

Test one was with 100% water with pre and post submersion weight measurement. Upon removal of the sample from the liquid the surfaces were dried, this only took a quick swipe with a fresh blue shop paper towel. The water by and large sheeted off due to the polishing. Weight uptakes were between 4.8 and 5.1 percent with ash (I could maybe find the worksheets I recorded all this on, I'm with the process summary I wrote for myself). This was consistent enough that I did investigate any changes to the testing procedure and investigated the cherry and found a weight uptake of between 5.5 and 5.8 percent.

My personal findings were consistent enough with Ellis, 1999's paper (that test had used pine, maple and oak) that I did not question the findings.

The second test mimicked the test as performed in the Ellis paper. Alcohol based dye was mixed with water to create a penetrating solution. The test was performed in the same manner with the same cleaning post submersion. Weight gain was similar though significantly (in the statistical sense) skewed to a tighter curve that overlapped the lower end of the original curve due to alcohols evaporation and lower specific gravity (I know six samples is not great for statistical sampling but I was only willing to go so far in my house for my own process used to make my own tools)

Once weighed the samples were lightly sanded to ensure a clean surface for examination. At this point you could see the lines that the penetrate followed. in the early growth rings. Under the microscope Small specs of dye were noticeable on the end grain that were similar in nature to the speckling of acrylic on a untested sample.

The Ellis paper went into more depth in testing (upto 96h) than I was willing to do. I was simply trying to conduct enough to understand how the material would react under extreme but normal conditions (storage in a a garage in the midwest).

If I cut my samples in half you could see that the penetrate did not move significantly throughout the surface. Looking around the edges the penetrate moved further in through the early growth than through the interstitial spaces between the fibers themselves on the late growth. What I would refer to as the wood itself (the material the looked wood fiber) was untouched in the late growth. Individual fibers could be picked out at the lowish levels of magnification I had on hand (15 to 45x).

All of this assumes that whatever stabilization you're using matches the material I used. HEMA is needed to ensure near 100% penetration, blends without HEMA showed less adhesion to the cellular structure in the Ellis paper (they were able to produce SEM micrographs, much better than my little scope) and significantly more penetration into the structure of the wood itself with the dye testing.

You can find that paper here: http://originwww.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf1999/ellis99a.pdf
 
I just have to say WOW! I had no idea there was so much info behind different aspects of knife making. I was surprised at all the stuff that was happening when you heat treat. A lifetime worth of learning to be had there. Then this info about stabilizing wood. Amazing.
 
Okay, I put tru-oil on my knife handle the other day. I don't know what the hardening agent is in it but I know now that tru-oil has something that hardens...like tung oil does only harder. I don't know if this goes against what some people were saying about not putting a "top coat" on their handle. But I know it is putting something on the top that isn't soaking in.
 
tru oil is basically boiled linseed oil which hardens (slowly in its own) with metallic dryers added to showed the process up.
 
Stabilized wood will definitely absorb oil finishes. As others have said, a stabilized block of wood isn't solid plastic. The organic material can absorb moisture, dirt etc. Using a few coats of oil will seal the pores in the wood, and as Mark pointed out, properly used, can fill the open grains in the wood giving a more uniform surface. I agree with the final wax finish, I use Blue Ribbon, designed for hardwood floors. Great stuff. :thumbup:It works great on the oily hardwoods that don't respond to stabilizing too.
 
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