Thread: Plexiglas as a timber stabiliser

there is a whole section on casting and stabilisation over on the pen forum

Some of those guys, have realy done a lot of work on the matter and realy know their stuff.

Just about any resin can be used to stabilise wood with varying degrees of success.

I often use shellac to harden and stabilise turnings

Some soft timbers like sheeoak cut realy poorly across the end grain......soaking the rough cut bowl in a thin cut of shellac and letting it harden realy makes the grain stand up and be cut resulting in a far better finish.

I have seen shalec run right thru a 10mm thick bowl blank in sheoak.

as for CA being expensive....yeh..well......most of the time you are paying more for the package and the mark up than you are for the contents.

Buying it in larger bottles and from the right place can Considerably reduce the price.

Niel AKA DiSensi......is also known as "The resin king", due to his high consumption of a range of resins......last time the subject came up he was telling me he baught CA in litre containers........but if buying in those quantities.....you beeter be using it fast, before it goes off or evaporates.

ANYway..duck over to the pen section and have a read.......oh sorry...buy a carton of red bull or a large bottle of coffee..then go over there for a read......there is heaps of stuff on the matter over there.

cheers

Originally Posted by soundman

there is a whole section on casting and stabilisation over on the pen forum

Some of those guys, have really done a lot of work on the matter and really know their stuff.

Just about any resin can be used to stabilise wood with varying degrees of success.

I often use shellac to harden and stabilise turnings

Some soft timbers like sheeoak cut realy poorly across the end grain......soaking the rough cut bowl in a thin cut of shellac and letting it harden realy makes the grain stand up and be cut resulting in a far better finish.

I have seen shalec run right thru a 10mm thick bowl blank in sheoak.

as for CA being expensive....yeh..well......most of the time you are paying more for the package and the mark up than you are for the contents.

Buying it in larger bottles and from the right place can Considerably reduce the price.

Neil AKA DaiSensei......is also known as "The resin king", due to his high consumption of a range of resins......last time the subject came up he was telling me he baught CA in litre containers........but if buying in those quantities.....you beeter be using it fast, before it goes off or evaporates.

ANYway..duck over to the pen section and have a read.......oh sorry...buy a carton of red bull or a large bottle of coffee..then go over there for a read......there is heaps of stuff on the matter over there.

cheers

Thanks for the good advice, soundman. You're right - my best info so far has been from the pen section. Got plenty of tea-bags and coffee.

And I've had the same (problem?) of things going straight through the walls of thin bowls, both WOP and shellac. Had it happen a few times lately, with Meranti and Southern Silky. 3mm walls. It came as a surprise on the first Meranti bowl while putting a coat of finish on the inside for the vac chuck. Luckily I'd already sanded the outside, so I just spread it out.

I'll have a hunt for suppliers of larger, cheaper quantities of thin CA, too. I've been using heaps lately. Got some SSO slabs and some NGR with a lot of fine cracks. Currently I use Hot Stuff from Carbatec. Not the cheapest place to buy things.

One litre bottles.
You sure Neil's not drinking it?
I reckon 250ml bottles would be ideal for me right now.

Yeh I don't think he is drinking it......very small quantities of CA taken by mouth will send you blind.....apparently it sends the fluid in the eye permanently milky.

this is the reason why it is only sold in very small quantities in retail stores....keep this stuff well away from children.

I don't find stuff running thru timber a problem.....I make it work to my advantage......the shellac penetrates full thickness on the first application....if you are thinking about impregnation and stabilisation...this is a good thing.

As for places to buy CA and a few other thing ..try hobby king.

cheers

Originally Posted by soundman

Yeh I don't think he is drinking it......very small quantities of CA taken by mouth will send you blind.....apparently it sends the fluid in the eye permanently milky.

Yeah, pretty wicked stuff while it's wet. Those fumes are a give-away.

I don't find stuff running thru timber a problem.....I make it work to my advantage......the shellac penetrates full thickness on the first application....if you are thinking about impregnation and stabilisation...this is a good thing.

I'm pretty sure that the Meranti bowls gained a fair bit of weight by the time the WOP had completely filled the pores. Sort of wish I'd weighed them before and after. I don't find it a problem either. It just caught me off-guard the first time it happened.

As for places to buy CA and a few other thing ..try hobby king.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check them out shortly. I've been buying a little bottle from Carbatec every few weeks.

My neighbor in Mackay showed me his timber coating made from white polystyrene foam, dissolved in thinners until it turns to a liquid. He told me to add foam until it becomes a paint type liquid and showed me examples. I used it a bit for exterior timber and it seemed to work ok. I think if it was made to a thinner consistency it would do a similar think to CA. I have used CA when I was making knives on the handle

Yeh Ive brewed styro in thinners.
At one time I got a lot of product packaged in styrofoam.....I managed the issue by desolving it in thinners in a 20 litre drum.

When it got thick and gluggy I would use it or give to to certain people as end sealer for cut timber.

The problem with so many of these " improvsed" products is that they do not contain things like plasitcsers and UV inhibiters that make them a long term product.

Another issue is that some things no matter how much you dilute them will not penetrate and bond with timber.

Polyester resin ( as used in fiberglass) for example realy has a quite poor affinity for wood.....compare it with the modern marine epoxies and there is a world of difference.

The modern marine epoxies are specifocally designed to penetrate and bond with timber.

There is also a great variance in how various resins respond to dilution.

Shelac is a very special product....it retains its internal bonding properties over a very very wide dilution range, where other resins get to a point where dilution dramitally compromisses their performance as a resin.

There are some products that have been very well proven in this role....and lots of things have been tried.

We use acrillic, polyeurathane and nitrocelulose in paints and varnishes......ever wondered why we don't use pollystyrene.

cheers

Originally Posted by MikeLee

My neighbor in Mackay showed me his timber coating made from white polystyrene foam, dissolved in thinners until it turns to a liquid. He told me to add foam until it becomes a paint type liquid and showed me examples. I used it a bit for exterior timber and it seemed to work ok. I think if it was made to a thinner consistency it would do a similar think to CA. I have used CA when I was making knives on the handle

Heh I was about to ask if anyone had used polystyrene disolved in acetone?
something I'd heard about a couple of years ago but haven't had a chance to try

edit - just saw soundman's post - helpful

When I was a kid, I discovered how well polystyrene foam dissolves into petrol. I had a ball slapping it onto all sorts of things around the back yard.
Bloody hard to remove, though. DAMHIKT

Here are two things that I cannot figure out:
1. You buy unpolymerized resin/catalyst and soup it up, goop it up, for whatever you want. That's fairly
easy to manipulate for composition, properties and open time.
2. You dissolve already polymerized resin in what ever brew you like and then expect it to have the same binding properties?

I can't see the equivalent in terms of mechanical properties at the end of the day.
I don't want to throw rocks, I'd like to know how these two things compare in service.

Originally Posted by Robson Valley

Here are two things that I cannot figure out:
1. You buy unpolymerized resin/catalyst and soup it up, goop it up, for whatever you want. That's fairly
easy to manipulate for composition, properties and open time.
2. You dissolve already polymerized resin in what ever brew you like and then expect it to have the same binding properties?

I can't see the equivalent in terms of mechanical properties at the end of the day.
I don't want to throw rocks, I'd like to know how these two things compare in service.

That's why I originally posted. I saw it on YouTube and was wondering about it's merits, not extolling them. Sounded like a good way to put perspex offcuts to good use rather than just shove them into landfill as garbage.
Simple as that.

Loved the read. you start sone interetibg threads and get the old cogs going in the brain

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

Originally Posted by DaveTTC

Loved the read. you start sone interetibg threads and get the old cogs going in the brain

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

Thanks Dave, when I saw the YouTube vid I thought it was an interesting idea too, worthy of posting here.
I'm not really what you'd call a greenie, but to my mind anything that we can do to reduce the amount of plastic waste going into the garbage is well worth consideration.
I don't doubt that perspex can be recycled in other ways, but local tip recycling depots just throw it into the landfill as far as I'm aware.

Same with plastic bags, unfortunately. Our local council says not to put plastic bags into the recycling bin, so they all go into landfill too. Sad.
Can we melt plastic shopping bags in solvent and use it for something?

I thought of another use for the aforementioned polystyrene foam earlier, too, woodturning-related, but I'll keep it to myself until I've tried it.

Originally Posted by Robson Valley

Here are two things that I cannot figure out:
1. You buy unpolymerized resin/catalyst and soup it up, goop it up, for whatever you want. That's fairly
easy to manipulate for composition, properties and open time.
2. You dissolve already polymerized resin in what ever brew you like and then expect it to have the same binding properties?

I can't see the equivalent in terms of mechanical properties at the end of the day.
I don't want to throw rocks, I'd like to know how these two things compare in service.

I'll give you an anecdote. In the recent pair of Jatoba handled dovetail saws I just finished I used the polycarbonate/acetone vacuum infusion technique I've developed. While I was buffing one of the handles the buffer grabbed it away from me and it went straight down onto a concrete surface. From the sound I was sure it was broken. After I found it (it bounced a couple of times) I noted that it had a small dent on the lower rearward facing horn of the handle that was easily corrected. No splits or cracks appeared.
In mesquite, which is fairly porous, I've found that my technique pushes the polymer solution in between 3mm across the grain and 5 mm along the grain from the outer surface with a 10 minute treatment.

On the matter of polermerised resins.

Not all resins are polimers.

and various resins can be produced and manipulated in different ways....and there are different forms of some resins that behave differently.

A resin may be produced my mixing a selection of reactive components.....we may obtian said resin in an unmixed form or in finished form.......some such resins or similar ones may then either desolve in solvent.....or be melted.....to be worked in a different manner.

But the variety of properties and behaviour of resins is vast.

polystyrene for example is initally produced by reacting mixed chemicals and will most definitely disolve in a range of common solvents.

Most epoxies on the other hand once mixed will not redily disolve in solvents and will not melt in a reusable way.

then there are thermo setting resins....that once heated and cured remain solid......thermo plastic resins on the other had well soften and melt at any time.

Knowing the behaviour of the particular resin you are working with can be massivly advantageous.

cheers