plans for building a wood stabilizer????

B . Buxton

B . Buxton

Joined
Jul 8, 2001
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I have several types of wood on my farm and would like to use some for handles, persimmon,walnut,hedge,locust,hickory, oak,etc. Does anyone have a set of plans for a wood stabilizer or know where I can find a set.

Thanks
Bill
 
If I may give my oficial opinion as a cabinet maker,

all you are doing with that machine is removing all the water from the wood.

some of the exotic woods (like rosewood, ebony pink ivory etc.) are very dificult to dry and will be better to work if this is done.

most of these woods will pick up moisture from the air and the wood that has been treated in this manor will expand.
 
Eric,

Do you think that air drying for say 1 year and then submerging the wood in a liquid like boiled linseed oil for 1-2 weeks would give about the same effect. I will not cut any wood until the sap is down and the ticks & chiggers are not so hungry :D , so I have time to build something or come up with plan.
Bill
 
Check the archives here in shop talk there has been a lot discussed here about this subject in the past, and recent past. I had good luck without any elaborate setup and expensive chemicals by soaking handle material (walnut and soft maple) in a jar until they stopped floating. Minwax wood hardner being the chemical May not be the most efficient but.....

Harry Jensen has done a lot of experimenting in this area so listen to what he has to say.
 
I'd say air dry it for a year per inch.

when you cut your scales, stick them in a food dehydrater(or a box heated by a light bulb) for a couple of days

finish shaping them and then coat them with either linsead oil or toung oil(linsead gives an aged look toung oil is clear). these will soak in and harden the outer layer of the wood.

wood that is compleetly dry will absorb 3-4% moisture.(unless you live in the deasert or the coast. then it can very 2-3% up or down.)(it is not a good idea to ship anything from florida to western colorado, and visa versa)

some woods are more of a problem than others,beech maple, and red oak are unstable and the walnuts, teak, and rosewoods don't move around that much. this is a generalization, wood varies from tree to tree.

luckily the pieces we are talking about are small

don't forget osage orange, dog wood,and any of the neighbor's shade trees, I've rescued lots of neat stuff from firewood piles too.

I've got a piece from a grafted walnut, half black half english

you just never know:D

minwax wood hardener was designed to soak in and fill the cell walls of half rotted wood, it would probobly work just fine as a stabilization agent.
 
My stepfather used to own a company called WSSI, and lemme tell ya what.... I don't know how many stories we kept getting of guys who tried to do what he was doing and blew up their tubes, wounding and in a few cases even killing themselves. Unless you are VERY serious about your equipment, give up the idea in a big hurry, it's not something you want to do with just any sort of chamber.
 
Eric, I've only used this three times now but the Minwax water based polyurethane Bruce Evans talked about, has just worked great. I put the scales in a tupperware container and put a chunk of lead on top of the wood to keep it down. Left in for a week and wiped and dried. I did use it on a piece of Beech and it has not moved at all.
 
Sounds real exciting, Bill. I love wood, and Missouri is a great place for it. Lived there about 2 years when a kid, in a one-horse town about 20 miles -- north, I think -- of Sedalia. It hurts me and my Dad to admit it now, but we burned mostly oak in our fireplace, with black locust, hedge apple, and even occasionally some black walnut. We loved to have fires of the hedge apple and black locust, cause the flames were mainly green and purple, not normal flame colors. Absolutely beautiful, and a terrible waste of woods.

Have often wondered why I don't see more persimmon wood on knife handles. Will look forward to some from you.

Good luck in building a chamber if that is the route you go.
 
Peter you are saying that water based poly will work it's way into the wood if you leave it submurged for a week, I'll have to try that.

I hate polyurathane as a coating, but in the wood, it would be alot more durable than any of the oils that are traditional.

I'll have to try this.:)

FYI...persimon is a relative of ebony It should work realy well on knive handles
 
Bugs3x sedalia is about 60 miles west, but theres a lot of hedge and walnut and if you didn't burn it they would probably just doze it up into brush piles clearing fields.

Eric, yes dogwood makes nice handles, the only problem with it, is its pretty wormy and it is hard as a rock.Looks good through with a couple 3 coats of tru oil.

I'll try that water based minwax, but would like to find a way to stablize it quicker when its first cut. And what would make a vacuum pump with out spending a bundle.
Bill
 
Eric, it does work nicely from what I done. One really good thing is that if you wope it off and let it dry, then shape it and sand it, a quick buff will make it look like a hand rubbed oil finish. I've tried it on real porus stuff that I haven't made into knife handles (yet) like fossil whale bones. Tje jury is still out on that one.
 
Peter, how can you tell if Minwax polyurethane is water based? I finally got a vacuum pump and I'm making a vessel out of an old fire extingisher bottle. I've got about 3/4th's of a gallon of Minwax polyurethane and I read on the can trying to find out how to thin it but it says nothing. Sure would be great if you just ad water.
 
Originally posted by mikeS
Check the archives here in shop talk there has been a lot discussed here about this subject in the past, and recent past. I had good luck without any elaborate setup and expensive chemicals by soaking handle material (walnut and soft maple) in a jar until they stopped floating. Minwax wood hardner being the chemical May not be the most efficient but.....

Harry Jensen has done a lot of experimenting in this area so listen to what he has to say.
Click to expand...

I've posted the plans I used quite a few times on this and other fourms, so to avoid taking up bandwidth (and boring everyone else to tears :barf: ), hit me via e-mail if you're interested.
jensenfarm@aol.com
 
L-6 Cut the polyurethane with mineral spirits....
The only way I know of to stabilize Green wood is with PEG that stuff they use in antifreeze...I would like to find some of that myself but haven't had any luck...
The Minwax Liquid wipe on poly works great on DRY wood.
When I got my stabilizing tank from Alex Daniels,He told me that I had to make sure that my piece of material was completely submersed then pull the vaccum,this pulls the air out of the pores of the wood but does not pull the liquid into the wood or what ever you have put into the tank.When you let the atmosphereic pressure back into the tank the material then acts like a sponge and absorbes the liquid faster than if it was just let soak.It will soak liquid at the same rate if you just put it into a container at normal pressure as it would if you left it setting in the vaccum chaber under a vaccum.
You can add extra pressure back into the tank after you pull the vaccum and this will help in pushing the liquid into the piece,But this can be very DANGEROUS and it doesn't take that long to pull a vaccum and let it come back to normal pressure so I just run about 4 cycles on my pieces and haven't found a piece yet that I didn't penetrate all the way through.I have done some 2 inch square pieces also.
But just letting the piece soak submerged in the liquid for a long perioed of time will work also,If you think about it a piece of wood left in the lake will come out soaked all the way through the piece and not just on the surface.And your fence boards will soak rain water all the way through during a good long rain storm.
So if you are needing to stabilize but don't have a way to do it,Try just soaking a piece of wood or bone or stag scrap for a few days to determine how long you will need to soak the material and try this method as it does work.You can speed this process up if you will set the container in the sun and warm it up some that way,Please don't put the liguid in or on a stove as I wouldn't want anybody to get hurt or burnt or anything like that.
Bruce
 
I have had good luck with boiled linsead oil and tung oil by putting the liquid in a plastic bag and dropping the finished handle in the liquid. I leave it for a week or so. Kitchen knives are really mistreated and the ones I'm using haven't shown any tendency for the wood to move.

Because I'm cheap I work all the air I can out of the baggy and tape the plastic to the knife blade. This allows you to reuse the liquid.

Lynn:D
 
I would realy hesitate to put green (fresh cut, wet)wood in a vaccume chamber.

you need to season it first.

minwax makes 2 kinds of polyurithane. they are easy to tell apart.
If you can see through it, thin it with mineral spirits
If it's milky and smells of amonia, use water

I'll post a sourse for PEG later today
 
PEG is not the same stuff that's in antifreeze.
polyethilene glycol is for wood, and propalene glycol is for cars
It doesn't work, I tried it

you can get PEG at Lee Valley Hardware phone # 1-800-871-8158
or on the web at www.leevalley.com

They also carry a compound called Pentacryl that is supposed to work the same.(I actualy have some, but I've never used it:rolleyes: )

sorry I forgot, it actualy came highly recomended.

Lee Valley Hardware is a good supplier.
I've delt with them for years
 
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