stabilizing wood

[quint]

Well just starting out and trying to learn as much as I can. Pretty new here. Saw a few different sites that talked about stabilizing wood using minwax hardener and doing the canning method (basically). Saw a couple with a hand pump and bag with some other type of resin in it (cant remember what that one used).

Anyways not wanting to go thru the hassle and time of doing the canning method I decided to try out the vacuum sealer I have. Ofcourse its not without trial and error. Wasnt thinking and decided to use some of the canisters (plastic) that came with it that I had not used in 5 years since I bought it. Well the hardener is very bad for plastics I found out. Sorry no pics of that one but the hard plastic was cracking within an hour and the lid was starting to drip

So grabbed a large jar at the good will, some fittings and a valve from lowes. Epoxied the one fitting into the lid. Used some tygon and ran that to a valve which had fittings attached to each side then ran that to the vacuum sealer connection. Seems to work great. Here are a couple of pics. I had to wrap electrical tape around the lid because its not air tight unfortunately.

I am sure this has been done before and if anyone has any better suggestions for doing this type of home style stabilizing please chime in.

 

[pullrich]

Going to sound ignorant here but that will make it like any other day for me. Why not just stew the wood in the substance for a year or so?

 

[quint]

Dont have the time to be waiting a year or so personally. I think with the canning method it takes a week or so of sitting in it. I will probably try leaving it in the mix for a couple of days and see what happens.

 

[Mudbug007]

I was about to try this once when I found a post by someone stating that Minwax wood hardener would turn white when it got wet. Doing further research, I found others who had wood stabilized with Minwax wood hardener that turned white when it got wet. So I decided against trying my own stabilization.

 

[quint]

That is interesting to know Mudbug, hadnt read anything on that. Will have to experiment with this batch of wood when it gets done. Its going to be used for myself and a gift or two right now so if it does end up going bad somehow it wont be like I sold it to someone which would not be good.