Stabilizing wood with 2k epoxy resin WIP

Ken H> said:
I understand you said Cactus Juice (or other stabilizing resin) is hard to get in Austria so finding a good alternative would be good. It does seem like you're doing good research and using decent tests to determine if the "stabilized" wood has soaked up the epoxy. Good job.

Let's see if I understand, the Apple (is that the almost black block in lower left corner?) is fully under water. The block that's in the lower right corner looks like it might be floating about half out of water with only about half of the wood submerged? The idea of testing in water is the raw wood floats high out of water. Depending on how much resin is soaked into wood determines how low in water the finished block floats. With enough resin the block will sink. Most all K&G stabilized blocks will sink, but might float with just the top of block at waterline. That's the same as my results with Cactus Juice. I do find that home stabilizing needs an open pore type wood. A fairly dense wood like American Black Walnut doesn't home stabilize very good while K&G does a GREAT job with the wood.



Keep up the good work.
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Thanks for the heads up and your comment. Apple is the dark block that sank in water but revealed a pocket of unsaturated wood (irony). I would say that other blocks were barely floating.

I had the same problem with an equivalent of Cactus juice while stabilizing this apple wood (while grinding the handle I came upon a small pocket that didn't take any resin).

There is equivalent resins to Cactus Juice in EU. It's actually nice that you don't need to "bake" this resin and somehow the blocks felt stronger/tougher then when stabilized with equivalent of CJ.

Poplar burl is very soft so this part is quite important.

For apple I might try to stabilize only scales in the future. I suspect the spalting and different hardness of wood make it challenging for good saturation. I also plan to try out other heat curing acrilic resins in the future (Sk Resin 1505 and Vacuuseal).

Stabilizing professionally would put me almost in the price range where I could buy the finished stabilized block, hence my home experiments.
 
Slabs of the spalted poplar burl I posted earlier and some bog oak.

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CQSym6L.jpg


I will need a sick leave of about a year and some full time knife making to get rid off of some of the wood :)
 
FredyCro said:
I will need a sick leave of about a year and some full time knife making to get rid off of some of the wood :)
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That sounds like a terrible problem...I feel for you!
If I can be so bold as to offer some advice. Don't get too comfortable, because life will change your circumstances. I used to think that very same thing when I had my own place where I heated and cooked with wood. I had a growing pile of maple (burls, curly, spalted and various combinations of the above) for handles and thought I wouldn't have to worry about having enough, so I gave a lot away. Suddenly 4 years ago I was diagnosed with a mild seizure disorder and had to give up driving, which meant I had to sell my farm in the foothills and move to a city with decent public transportation. Now my wood pile is steadily shrinking instead of growing....
 
weo said:
That sounds like a terrible problem...I feel for you!
If I can be so bold as to offer some advice. Don't get too comfortable, because life will change your circumstances. I used to think that very same thing when I had my own place where I heated and cooked with wood. I had a growing pile of maple (burls, curly, spalted and various combinations of the above) for handles and thought I wouldn't have to worry about having enough, so I gave a lot away. Suddenly 4 years ago I was diagnosed with a mild seizure disorder and had to give up driving, which meant I had to sell my farm in the foothills and move to a city with decent public transportation. Now my wood pile is steadily shrinking instead of growing....
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I hear you. I just wish I had more time for knife making. For the time being, I am of course thankful to be in good health and able to pay rent for my small shop and buy new tools and materials occasionally. If all goes right I will treat myself to a real grinder as a small reward for pushing through this year. It's funny how we take some stuff for granted until we lose them...
 
There was another large thread that Cushing started about home stabilizing. I remember part of it dealt with the resins being used to stabilize and the thickness/viscosity (I don't know the term) of them. How if the particles are too big they just wont be drawn into the wood. I guess I am wondering if you have researched that part of the two part resin you are using.
This has been a very interesting thread by the way.
 
Randydb said:
There was another large thread that Cushing started about home stabilizing. I remember part of it dealt with the resins being used to stabilize and the thickness/viscosity (I don't know the term) of them. How if the particles are too big they just wont be drawn into the wood. I guess I am wondering if you have researched that part of the two part resin you are using.
This has been a very interesting thread by the way.
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Thank you, that thread was what got me interested in home stabilizing in the first place, I went one more through it. I thougth of viscosity and though the 2k resin seemed much thicker than CJ equivalent I used before, I was surprised to see it is about 20 times less vicousious (is this even a word?)! I will post exact number when I am back at home.

Here is a part of @Cushing H. summary:
"resin viscosity is not necessarily going to affect your degree of penetration of the wood - BUT with the more viscous resins you need to allow more "soak" time at pressure to allow the resin time to flow into the deepest pore spaces."

Of course this might present an issue with resin that cures with time.

The goal should be to reach 100% at the vacuum stage. Also something that @Greenberg Woods said in the same thread made me think, that cycling (releasing the vacuum stage couple of times during vacuum stage) can help pentration. Each time this is done, I imagine that the atmospheric pressure pushes the resin a bit deeper.

My next try I will try to this more often and pull vacuum for at least 6 hours (as the YT video suggests). I will also orient the wood vertically and cover by at least an inch of resin on top.

Yesterday I was in shop and I noticed the stabilized pieces got a bit harder. I can't nick the poplar with my nail anymore.
 
Releasing the vacuum stage couple of times during vacuum stage will help a lot .Do not underestimate 1 bar pressure , inflate the tire one bar and it will be clear to you how much pressure it is . We are designed to withstand that pressure and we don’t feel it but it is there :) I would do that more then couple of times................
 
It seems to me that you got pretty close with your first effort here. Seems to me that a few tweeks and you have a good chance of winding up with nicely diy stabilized wood.

I know that your resin has a certain life before it cures being two part. But I was thinking of the pieces you cut open and discovered pockets that resin hadn't gotten into. Do you think it would work to put those pieces into the resin again under pressure? Would the unfilled parts fill and you would have a useable piece? Because you have just small areas to fill, could you pop them in for a few hours after taking out the the next batch?
 
Randydb said:
It seems to me that you got pretty close with your first effort here. Seems to me that a few tweeks and you have a good chance of winding up with nicely diy stabilized wood.

I know that your resin has a certain life before it cures being two part. But I was thinking of the pieces you cut open and discovered pockets that resin hadn't gotten into. Do you think it would work to put those pieces into the resin again under pressure? Would the unfilled parts fill and you would have a useable piece? Because you have just small areas to fill, could you pop them in for a few hours after taking out the the next batch?
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I think that it would actually be enough to just smear some resin on that spot to get some penetration. I don't know if the color would change equally.

I also realized that I can actually cut the blanks smaller. So instead of 4x3 cm I could cut the scales straight away as 40x15mm or block as 40x25 and WA blanks as 30x30mm. Softer wood for WA handles and denser wood for scales. WA handles could even get a 3mm down the middle to chanel the epoxy further in if denser wood is used. This would for sure help with quicker and deeper penetration of resin.

What interested me about this resin is if the results are tougher then with acrylic resin and my first impression is yes.

Rosewood and naturally dense and oily wood I can leave as they are.
 
The coloring/dyeing should go in the resin not on the block surface.

Pablo
 
PEU said:
The coloring/dyeing should go in the resin not on the block surface.

Pablo
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It's a water based wood dye and I pulled vacuum on it. Should go through and once the wood is dry it will be stabilized..
 
Yes, but it won't tell you if the resin got to the core...
 
PEU said:
Yes, but it won't tell you if the resin got to the core...
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Thats true, but with the shown wood I am quite sure I will get almost full saturation based on my first try. I will dry the wood more thoroughly and I know now that I can pull vacum and soak wood for longer then I did the first time without the resin curing too early on me. I was also happy with the results of the first test.

The procedure has been done by others successfully but from what I can see everybody does it on wood with a lot of capillary action (poplar, spalted beech and other "soft" wood).

I might do a small test in a separeted container with even denser wood and colored epoxy to see what will happen.
 
I would do the test with dyed epoxy first. Do it on something middle of the road like curly maple.

I have doubts about your statement that the epoxy will be harder. The acrylic resin impregnates the wood better in my estimation and will create harder wood. It certainly will polish better. From what I have seen in spec sheets, the acrylic is vastly lower in viscosity and will penetrate far more and into smaller pores and tubes. The addition of heat only increases this. I await your results.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
I would do the test with dyed epoxy first. Do it on something middle of the road like curly maple.

I have doubts about your statement that the epoxy will be harder. The acrylic resin impregnates the wood better in my estimation and will create harder wood. It certainly will polish better. From what I have seen in spec sheets, the acrylic is vastly lower in viscosity and will penetrate far more and into smaller pores and tubes. The addition of heat only increases this. I await your results.
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Will do. I think that maybe my statement holds for really porous woods because thicker epoxy resin fills larger voids better? Please tell me if this sounds stupid.

I will try the colored epoxy test in the next batch.
 
At the end of a day , you can first finish handle on knife then in chamber , even can be finish glued on tang and all knife goes in vacuum.....
 
Natlek said:
At the end of a day , you can first finish handle on knife then in chamber , even can be finish glued on tang and all knife goes in vacuum.....
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Too complicated, the process is too long and somewhat messy. I want to do a batch and have 10-20 blocks ready to go, this will be at least one year reserve for me if I count in all the wood that doesn't need stabilizing and other handle material (micarta, horn and such).

I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I am just doing what others have done and reported it worked for them.

Once again, if I had available economic stabilizing service I would go for it. If this proves not to work I will go back to acrilic resin and work on my process. In worst case it will cost me 50 euro of epoxy, some wood that I either found or got at bargain price and my time.

I would of course love it this works the way it is supposed to. I am sharing my experience so other can help me with their advice and share their opinion on topic. In the end the topic might prove valuable for someone who is trying to stabilize wood at home to see what should or shouldn't be done (like many threads here). Thanks for all the comments and advice until now, I appreciate it a lot.
 
Natlek said:
Can you give me link to exact epoxy you use ? I want to try something with it ?
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https://www.fiberglas-discount.de/glasklares-giessharz-resinpal-1717-N3

www.amazon.de › Resinpal-1717-gl... Gießharz glasklar | 1 kg Resinpal 1717 + 0,45 kg ... - Amazon.de


On Amazon you can see description depending on what hardener you use (N3 has the longest window, and from the first try I would say it is double of what it says it is).

Some guys cut it with acetone to lower viscosity.
 
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