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when to stabilize wood?

Started by mossyhorn2, July 17, 2016, 07:55:23 PM

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mossyhorn2

Just curious if there is a standard for stabilizing wood. Is it used on a certain style of wood ( burls, air dried) or is it something you use if the wood splits easily. Would you need to stabilize kiln dried wood? I'm just not familiar with stabilizing wood but I see where some callmakers use it.

Mabren2

Not a stabilizing expert, but here is how I understand it:

The stabilizing process draws resin inside the blank via vacuum pressure. When the resin cures, the wood will be much more stable, will likely turn a little better, and should sand and finish well. Some prefer stabilized blanks for everything for the reasons mentioned above, but it can add a lot of time and cost to the project.

Stabilizing is done once the wood is dry. I've even heard of some people putting dry blanks in an oven before stabilizing to lower the moisture content a little more. The need for stabilizing wood depends more on the structure of the wood, rather than how it was dried. Burls are likely candidates for stabilizing, because often dried burls (at least the ones I've worked with) can feel kinda light and airy, and all of the inclusions and crazy grain structure can cause the blank to crack/break while turning. Another likely candidate is spalted wood. The black line spalting happens when a fungus gets in the wood and it is decaying. There is a fine line between when the spalting looks beautiful, and when it is too far gone to be much good for turning. Stabilizing the blanks is used to give those soft/punky blanks the stability they need to be turned and finished well.

This is how I understand things, again not an expert on the subject. Hopefully this helps you some, and someone else will come along that can give you more firsthand knowledge on the subject.

mossyhorn2


mastevt

Mabren2 pretty much covered it all. Stabilizing is for making the burls, and spaulted woods useable.  However, what he didn't mention with it, is dying.  I do a fair amount of stabilizing, and I like to use dye.  A lot of times I double, or triple dye the wood.  You can get some amazing blanks out of it.  I always dry my wood in an old toaster oven for 24 hours prior to stabilizing.  The resin is water soluble.  If the blank has any moisture in it what so ever, during the curing process, the water will push out the resin.  You can dry blanks ahead of time, but put them in plastic zip lock bag after they are cooled enough, and then in a Tupperware container.  It will keep the moisture out and ready to use when needed.

Here is one that was triple dyed.  Spaulted Sycamore.  Soundboard is Ash.