Thread: Casting and Stabilising some Wollemi Pine

A client gave me a sliced small dead trunk of a Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis, family Araucariaceae not actually a pine -
WollemiPine.com - the official home of the Wollemi Pine.) for stabilizing and casting for pen blanks. This critically endangered tree was propagated and sold through nurseries and this one just didn't make it.


I started off by drying the timber pieces and recorded the weight every hour. It took 11 hours to dry showing the original blanks were at 12.68%MC and lost a total 33g (1.16oz) leaving the dry weight of 260.3g (8.12oz).

pieces in pan to dry.jpg Weight loss in oven.jpg


After cooling I placed the pieces in the vacuum tank under vacuum until no bubbles were given off, ~2hrs, then soaked the blanks for a further 4hrs and drip dried for 0.5hrs before finally baking the pieces to set the Cactus Juice stabiliser. There was very little bleed out but once removed the pieces weighed 460.5g (16.24oz) thus the pieces had gained 200g (7oz).

in the vac tank.jpg draining the CJ after soak.jpg cooking the pieces.jpg final stabilised pieces.jpg


Finally I cast them into 2 pen black blocks, the larger one in Red Russet Pearlex and the other Green Pearlex, both in Megapoxy HX.

ready to cast.jpg cast blocks.jpg cast blanks1.jpg