stablizing wood

B

bill may

Joined
Jul 30, 2014
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Alright I know a lot of guy's say send your stuff to the pro's to get it stabilized.
But I also know there's guy's like me who want to do this in house. Now I have a industrial vacuum pump
that will hold 30psi all day and I have sold air tight vacuum chamber. my question is what is the best stabilizing
solution to use? I've heard of cactus juice/minwax wood hardener. but I want to know to get the best results I can.
I know I'm going to hear don't do it yourself but I think we all share the (if they can do it I can do it) mentality.
So if anyone can do this what do you use?
 
I use my time in a more purposeful manner making knives and leave the stabilizing to the pros at K & G. I make knives that I expect to last a lifetime with handle material that should be there to the end. I don't want to fool with trying this concoction or that magic potion to find out its no where close to what people that specialize in this process can produce. My .02cents
 
Just to be clear, a vacuum pump that holds 30PSI would be useless. One that draws 30 inches of vacuum does not exist. Vacuum is measured in inches of mercury and other column measurements, not PSI.


The maximum theoretical vacuum is 29.92 inches of mercury. That is theoretical, and can't be reached with a pump. Even though the vacuum gauges all go to 30, that isn't possible. A very good pump will draw 28 inches. Most draw only 24 or so. That is still plenty enough for most purposes.






On the subject of home stabilization, it can be done, but it is extremely unlikely you will ever get the same quality product as commercial stabilization. You may not even be able to purchase the resins. I can absolutely say that Nelsonite, cactus juice, and Minwax wood hardener will NOT be nearly as good as wood stabilized by K&G or one of the other major stabilizers. Mark, at Burl source, spent a lot of money and time and found out even with thousands of dollars in resins and equipment it wasn't as good.
 
Can we for one second drop the "K&G does it best and you owe it to your customers" line?

Let's say I make a stacked wood handle from birch or leather. Wouldn't a vacuum pump and cactus juice be better than gooping ca on? Or say you want a tung oil finish on a take down handle. What about popping a vacuum on a handle block of something like ironwood that isn't stabilized?

Doing your own stabilizing is such a taboo. It's like asking if railroad spikes make good knives but worse. I've only used K&G material that I sent in or bought from Mark. So I get the idea of using the best.
 
I was wrong on my terminology. forgive my inexperience on that but the point I was trying make is that I have good vacuum pump that can maintain
a solid vacuum pressure.
 
If you insist on doing it yourself Cactus Juice is probably one of the best you can get without purchasing a large amount of chemicals.
Vacuum is only part of the process. The wood also needs to go under high pressure. Then after you attain full penetration there is the heat curing.
If you only stabilize maple you should be able to obtain ok results.
Just like learning to make knives, there can be a lot of failures before you get decent results.
 
Mark, I'm not sure Maple will stabilize very good with Cactus Juice - I know (confirmed by Curtis of Cactus Juice) that American Black Walnut doesn't work very well, and I do have a vacuum pump to hold at 29" of Hg. As I said, I've got some open pore woods (A spalted pecan for one) to work nicely - once stabilized, it sank in water. Leather works good. Even with the wood that sank in water, I still don't think it's as good as K&G which is most of commercialized woods I've used.

As Mark says - I do think Cactus Juice is the about the best of what's out there for home use, but it's still nothing like K&G or WSSI (?). I still can't imagine how they get that resin completely thru some of those hard woods like Bacote and others. They just don't really "need" stabilizing. My ROT is "if wood sinks in water, it doesn't need stabilizing".

Stacy - I missed the "30 PSI" completely and just read "good vacuum pump" - and that is NOT what the OP said in first post, but did correct in later post.

Ken H>
 
If you wasn't to try it, follow the above advice. I'm not saying you can't do it, just that it will not equal the product from the professionals.

I did it myself for a while, Mark did it, many others did, too....we almost all stopped. Why, because we didn't get the best product.

Just a bit of background on why I am particular on this. I was a research chemist back in the latter 1960's to early 70's. I worked on resins, catalysts, and their uses. While my particular field was paper coating and impregnating urea-formaldehyde resins, I have a fair understanding of what you are getting when different materials are used to "stabilize" wood. Many don't stabilize in the sense knifemakers desire.





My last comments on this and then I will let it be:
Years back, I decided that I can use twenty hours and a thousand dollars to make a lot of really nice knives, or to make home-brew stabilized wood. I decided to be a knifemaker. This also allowed me to buy really nice woods. I can then send those woods off to be stabilized while I make the knives. My main goal is a quality product and the best use of time and money. Sending the wood out filled that bill the best by far.

I used to brew beer, too. I stopped because, proud as I was of my fun hobby, I never would get near the quality and variety of the many micro-breweries that surround out area. I can enjoy a great variety of really good beer for less from them, and spend all that home brewing money and time on knifemaking :)
 
So called "cactus juice" is a commercially available product purchased in bulk, repackaged, relabled and rebranded with that name. MSDS from manufacture is also rebranded. I was informed by a very reliable source that cactus juice is Resinol 90C re-packaged. Take it for what it's worth.
 
Larry D. Davis said:
So called "cactus juice" is a commercially available product purchased in bulk, repackaged, relabled and rebranded with that name. MSDS from manufacture is also rebranded. I was informed by a very reliable source that cactus juice is Resinol 90C re-packaged. Take it for what it's worth.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the information.

Years ago we sent wood that was "stabilized" with Resinol 90C to a professional stabilizer to be reprocessed. The wood came back much heavier and polished much better.

Chuck
 
Hi Chuck, miss you at the shows!!

You know the "source" I speak of very well :) and it was confirmation of what I suspected.

It all comes down to what an individual considers, "good enough" for their knife work. No one should tell another (IMO) they "can't" do something as learning from failure is as important (if not more) than learning from success. Took 42 tries to get WD right.
 
I do thank you guys for all the good advise. I looked K&g their prices seem pretty reasonable.
I've been thinking about sending them a piece wood to stabilize and I'll do one from the same block
to see the difference in the two.
 
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