The point of stabilizing materials is to make them better. People used bronze for knife blades for centuries. Why upgrade to steel? It was a better material.
Don't your collectors and customers deserve the best?
Do you think bubinga really needs to be stabalized? Its greasy, and hard, and naturally pretty stable.
We've had hundred of pounds of bubinga stabilized. It responds well. The pores get filled and the color is less susceptible to change.
Osage has been used unstabalized and under stress in bows for a long time. Its a pretty ideal handle wood without stabalizing IMO.
Why not make it better? One of the problems with osage is color change. Professional stabilizing minimizes this problem.
And WSSI told me that Walnut wasn't good for stabalizing when I sent some in.
There are different species of walnut. Each species responds differently. English and black walnut stabilize without a problem. Claro walnut can turn black when stabilized. We send claro walnut to WSSI and include a note saying we will pay for stabilizing regardless of the result. I suspect someone sent in claro, it turned black, and they did not want to pay for processing. WSSI responded by saying they would not process claro walnut. The claro walnut we sent to WSSI was beautiful when it returned.
I have a bamboo cutting board that we've had for years and has been through the dishwasher, etc, and isn't checking or splitting, and is still flat.
Do you think stabilizing will make it better? In my experience bamboo gets better with stabilizing. The pores get filled and the wood gets a little more resistant to splintering.
Masur Birch is soft. But its stable, and its been used, unstabalized, on knife handles for centuries.
Do you think stabilizing will make it better? Masur birch gets harder and becomes a better material for a handle after stabilizing.
Teak is on that list, and that is just dumb. Teak is famous for being stable. And its maybe the oiliest wood I've ever used. They use it on sailboats for these properties.
What testing have you done to lead you to call stabiling teak "Dumb"? I don't think it is dumb at all. The teak we stabilized was spalted. Teak is susceptible to rot and deterioration just like other woods. Stabilization stops the spalting. We also stabilized regular teak and it readily accepted the process. It seemed harder after but I don't have a process for testing wood hardness.
Wenge is greasy and stable. The soft pithy lighter colored wood could maybe benefit from stabalizing, but it isn't a warp prone wood.
I've never seen a greasy piece of wenge. Maybe the wenge you had was not properly dried? Wenge has large open grain and a bad tendency to splinter. Stabilizing filled most of the open grain and minimized the splintering. I absolutely recommend stabilizing wenge.
The following are my opinions with regards to stabilizing.
Yhe following materials are
NOT stabiliants:
Minwax Wood Hardner
Polyurethane
Lacquer
Automotive Clear Coat
If you think any of them are stabilants, you are fooling yourself and short changing your customers. The professional stabilizing companies could save thousands of dollars if any of them would work for stabilizing.
We prefer to have our wood stabilized by WSSI. I feel K&G also does excellent work. We had to develop our own equipment and process for stabilizing cork. The cost of the equipment was several thousand dollars. However, we still send our wood to WSSI because
Mike does a better job with wood.
Not all woods should be stabilized. My favorite example is african blackwood. It stabilizes well. However, I think natural blackwood finishes better than stabilized blackwood. We recently pulled some african blackwood burl from our kiln. I refuse to have it stabilized. The figure is subtle and I don't want anything to interfere with the beauty of the wood.
Stacy always makes excellent points with regards to stabilizing. If you are going to stabilize your own wood you must have a good, i.e. expensive, moisture meter. You cannot judge moisture content by feel or touch.
Never use glass as a vacuum or pressure vessel when stabilizing. Using glass could win you a Darwin Award.
Never boil anything that creates explosive vapors. This also could win you a Darwin Award.
If anyone wants to discuss stabilizing feel free to stop by the booth at Blade.