Stabilized wood source?

I see quite a bit of misunderstanding whenever the difference between home stabilized and professional stabilized wood comes up.

I've had about 3500 pounds of wood stabilized by K&G, I've talked to brad about his process at great length, I have my B.S in chemistry, and my exit thesis was about wood stabilizing and adhesives.

3 things set professional and home stabilizing apart.

Equipment, materials and expertise.

Equipment: people always talk about the importance of a low vacuum or of long soak times as explanations for why their home stabilizing set ups are just as good as K&G. The issue is, vacuum is a diminishing return. The benefits of lower vacuum become exponentially less intense as the pressure lowers. That is where k&g is diffrent them any home set up. They use a pressure cycle. The do a pressure cycle followed by a vacuum cycle to get excellent penetration of resin.

Materials: K&G's resin and cactus juice are the chemical. Kind of... the resin being used is Methyl methacrate. It's basically the monomer that makes up acrylic. But the grade of the chemical used varies. Cactus juice is a relatively low grade. It contains a variety of side products, partially pulverized monomer, and other byproducts that lower the penetration and curing potential ofnthe resin. K&G use a much higher grade, and it is EXPENSIVE. That's just a fact. It's expensive stuff. Good chemicals are.

Expertise: brad had been doing this a LONG time. He knows what he is doing, knows how to tweak his processes, they check the moisture level of.each and every block.

The results: K&G stabilized wood is better than home stabilized wood. I know someone will comment that I havnt tried THEIR stabilized wood and I dont know. I have handled thousands and thousands of pounds of stabilized wood. I've also handled lots of wood stabilized in home set ups. And I can instantly tell the difference. The weight alone is a give away, in medium weight woods like hard maple, mango or tamarind K&G wood is generally 20-30% denser. There is also the matter of consistancy. In those thousands of pounds of wood, I have had maybe 10 blocks with sticky patches inside of uncured resin. My shopmate has a failure rate of roughly 1 in 10 from blocks purchased from home stabilizing.

Can home stabilizing work? Yes definitely.

Are home stabilized woods often good enough for use on a knife? Yes definitely.

Are they on par with K&G? No. Full stop.
 
Ben - i ask the question not to displace K&G, nor to question your experience and expertise. I am asking the question from the perspective of a hobbyist (NOT a seller) and also as a chemist/chemical engineer who thinks “this is kind of a cool process to better understand and maybe to try”. I have absolutely no doubt that K&G’s pressure cycle increases resin penetration (though my guess is that they do that after the vacuum and initial penetration steps .. or maybe as a series of cycles .. but not only just before vacuum)

In materials science there is an analytical analysis called “Mercury Porosimetry”, that is used to measure the distribution of pore sizes in a sample. Immerse in mercury, pull a vacuum to get gas out of all the pores, then apply pressure and measure amount of mercury that goes into the sample versus pressure (there being a mathematical relationship between pressure and pore size). You absolutely need the pressure to force the mercury penetration.

It seems to me that a similar situation applies here to stabilization (more on “hydroscopic” versus “hydrophilic” materials not included here). But the point here, and the question i am trying to ask is this: if you de-aerate the resin, then pull a good vacuum on the wood sample - good. When you then release the vacuum and apply atmospheric pressure to the sample, you ARE applying a pressure cycle to the sample (atmospheric pressure is what pushes the resin in to the pores of the wood) - just not as much as the presumably higher pressures that K&G uses).

But how much is enough???? You will likely never get absolute and total penetration of the pores by resin ... so somewhere you have to cross a line where the result is “Good enough for your purpose”. You could certainly have a DIFFERENCE in result between a home process (not necessarily cactus juice) and K&G, but BOTH be good enough (i am NOT saying that is the case though ... which was the core of my question of “what do you buy from K&G?”

I think Willie71 nailed it when he said you buy “name recognition” (really history, experience, consistency, trust). If i were making and selling high end knives i have no doubt i would go immediately to K&G, no questions asked. But i am not: i am a hobbyist / nerdy chemical engineer / materials scientist who thinks “this is a cool process that resonates with a whole lot of my professional experience. Can i learn it and develop my technique so that the result is good enough for my purposes?...). That is all.

BTW, there are several other heat cured acrylic resins out there than Cactus Juice - and i would likely look to one of them. As ben says, the more pure the resin the higher the likelihood of a complete cure (and also a reduced probability of yellowing of the cured resin as it ages). I sincerely doubt that K&G synthesizes their own resins - they buy them from SOMEWHERE. We should be able also to source the same higher quality resins...
 
Cushing, I think you are coming from this from the right mindset....Hobby, interest, wanting to try it out. It seems here that Ben says you can get good results at home too. Like anything, to get good at it you will need to take time and gain experience to get more consistent results.

I think you should begin a thread searching for those purer resins and materials to start yourself up. Also a thread that discusses processes. Go for it.
 
I find that cactusjuice works very well for lower density woods. I use mine mostly for poplar and maple. Anything denser than black walnut probably needs pressure to get full penetration rather than only vacuum. You can use a pressure pot, used for paint spray systems to add 100 psi after vacuum. I think k&g can go to thousands of psi, iirc though. I have weighed the resin uptake in poplar and maple with poplar and maple from the same tree, with my setup with cactus juice, and samples sent to k&g. No difference. Denser or oilier woods, no contest. K&g is superior.
 
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Understandable. Is there any reasonable way of determining if that uptake difference translates into a difference in PERFORMANCE? (Dimensional stability, etc). It seems to me the focus has been strictly on amount of uptake, but i have not seen discussion on the relationship between uptake and downstream performance, which is what we are really after, arent we?
 
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Ben.

Moderators - Any chance on getting this added to the stickies????
 
weo said:
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Ben.

Moderators - Any chance on getting this added to the stickies????
Click to expand...
If so, do you want a totally separate thread, as Randydb suggested? Depends i guess on whether you do indeed want to see more on characterization (like willie 71 talks about).? I am also still intetested in what i saw re apparent shrinkage of Dymondwood. Could be called something like “characteristics of stabilized wood” or something like that...
 
Cushing H. said:
If so, do you want a totally separate thread,
Click to expand...
What I want doesn't matter :). I just think this information could prevent future heated discussions that are based on personal experience and opinions instead of factual information.
 
I have only used K&G for my stabilizing and have no personal experience with home brew/ cactus juice stabilizing. But I did send a piece that was stabilized by K&G to a guy that was talking about he was getting good results doing it at home and his response was something like "I get it now"

Mark at Burlsource tried doing the stabilization in house before and come to the conclusion that K&G was the way to go. Maybe talk to him ?

If you send a box full of wood it only cost about 4 bucks a block to get it done by K&G
 
Ok ... how about i start a thread on wood stabilization and experience - facts and process experience only. Part of what drives my question is the prevalence of heated discussions based either on opinion , or differing intent for end use. Might be a few days though - right now i am floating on a boat in the middle of lake itasca (Mississippi headwaters)
 
Cushing H. said:
how about i start a thread on wood stabilization and experience -
Click to expand...

IMO, I'm not sure a new thread is the way to go as another separate thread will just add to search results, and I think it's important to have Ben's above post included. I'd say lets see what those in charge of this site suggest.
 
Agreed. If we start a new thread several of the previous posts would need to be copied in. Problem is current discussion is off topic from the original question...

Moderators - what think you?
 
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