Stabilizing wood at home. - Salad in a jar?

bladsmth said:
I would vent the tank, grab the cup, and toss the water in a spray over the group.. They would scream, thinking it would be boiling hot...until the spray hit them and they realized it was still ice cold.
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My 7th grade science teacher did the very same thing except he pretended to trip and spill it on a couple of people that were siting at the front table...good stuff
 
Minwax in not designed to be used in a vacuum, it has Ketones as volatile solvents to aid in penetrating the wood. When put under a high vacuum the Ketones boil off and render the original liquid thick and gooey and less likely to penetrate the wood. Watching it boil you could see the difference between the air being removed and the VOCs boiling off.

I know this because a friend brought me a piece of Maple and a can of Minwax last week.
 
John Moran said:
Minwax in not designed to be used in a vacuum, it has Ketones as volatile solvents to aid in penetrating the wood. When put under a high vacuum the Ketones boil off and render the original liquid thick and gooey and less likely to penetrate the wood. Watching it boil you could see the difference between the air being removed and the VOCs boiling off.

I know this because a friend brought me a piece of Maple and a can of Minwax last week.
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Good info, I was just getting ready to do a couple of test pieces with that stuff mixed with polyurethane, sounds like using a pulse method would be the way to go so as not to boil off all the solvents right away, how long did it take to boil off the solvents?
 
John, within a 60 seconds I had ketones condensing and dripping off of the exhaust tube on my vacuum pump. The ketones boiled off so fast that the temperature dropped about 40 degF and something (?) white waxy stuff formed on the weight I had holding the wood down.

It took a couple of days to dry, cooking it didn't help.

On the side of performance, I started out with a piece of Maple 1.5 x 3 x 7 and I think there is a half can of Minwax in there somewhere. Hold on.

I didn't want to give you any bad information, so I just went out and cut the block in half. It is cured, and it looks useable, but its not the kind of thing I would try to develop into a regular process. In fact I will never put it in a vacuum again.

Good luck, I hope this helped.
jm
 
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