Stabilised / Acrylicised woods for tool building

[Mikey R]

Hi,

We started talking about this on another thread, but I thought it was fair to give this its own thread.

I read somewhere that Blue Spruce Toolworks use acrylic impregnated curly maple in their mallet handles. Chris Schwarz reviewed one of their mallets on his blog, and gave it a thumbs up.

http://blog.woodworking-magazine.com/bl ... orite.aspx


Whilst researching hardwoods for guitar fingerboards, I read about a company called Gallery Hardwoods in the US that do this acrylic impregnating. From their website:

http://www.galleryhardwoods.com/stabilized.htm

Stabilized figured/Burl woods have been impregnated with monomores and acrylics to produce a dimensionally stable wood. Some advantages of stabilized woods are they minimize or totally eliminate:

Shrinking
Cracking
Expanding
Warping

Other benefits of stabilized wood include:

Moisture Stable
Oil Impervious
No Raised Grain

Some of the stabilized natural wood products we produce are pen blanks, knife handle blocks/scales, acoustic/Electric fingerboard blanks and goose/duck call blanks. We can also produce a custom size for you so please inquire using the contact/information request form for a custom price quote

The proprietor is a guy called Larry Davis. We were talking on a bass guitar building forum, I asked what kind of thicknesses he can process, the answer is over 2". Boards this thick would be perfect for tool making, either for plane infills, chisel handles, whatever.

He can also dye the acrylic, giving a kind of built in finish. Blue curly maple infill, anyone?

Ive also played a couple of basses with these fingerboards (by a company called ACG), and I can say they are very nice indeed!

From what I can tell, he's taking some time off, but regularly checks his emails.

 

[Aled Dafis]

Mike

I've read a little about acrylic impregnated wood, but it seems to be quite an involved process, and to my knowledge, there's nobody in this country that does it.

All the reports I've read about the Blue Spruce and Czeck Edge chisels point towards Acrylic impregnated wood as being the best thing since sliced bread.
Jameel Abrahams wrote about the Czeck Edge chisel on his blog a while ago. Czeck it out here.

http://oudluthier.blogspot.com/2009/05/new-czeck-edgebenchcrafted-chisel.html

I'd like to handle and use one to see what they're like.

Cheers

Aled

 

[Mikey R]

Maybe someone with a Blue Spruce chisel could comment - I think a few people on here have some?

Its also supposed to make the wood more dimensionally stable, so less problems with infill shrinkage.

p.s. - I guess it would also make it possible to use softer woods like spalted maple in an infill plane - now that would be something!

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

In my manufacturing business (parts made from powdered metal--primarily gears, etc. for automotive) we typically zinc plate parts. Because of the inherent porosity of powdered metal, the parts must be resin impregnated prior to plating. The impregnation process is the same for infusing acrylic into wood, with similar (read: not identical) acrylic material.

I've had a few wood pieces impregnated and have sent samples out to a few Galoots. Quite frankly, I've haven't had the time to turn any of the pieces I retained (I'm doing this from a hobby perspective and not as a potential business venture).

Anyhow, I'm sure on both sides of the pond there are zinc plating companies. Give them a call and ask if they resin impregnate metals before plating. If they do, drop a sample or two of wood off for treating and have a go of it.

T.Z.

 

[ivan]

I think the first time I heard of impregnation (No, no, not that) was in connection with split cane fishing rods. These are glued up from six equilateral sections planed up from from long thin pieces riven from much larger canes (prbably 50mm diameter). These were impregnated with epoxy.

Epoxy is widely available, and impregnation is quite simple if you have a vacuum press. The vacuum removes the air from the wood, submerged in the resin. You wait till the bubbles have cleared and then let the air back in, which pushes the resin into the wood. Air now replaced by resin, all done. You need a slow setting epoxy mix. If you can work out how to submerge timber in the resin inside the bag, under vacuum, no need to wait for air bubbles and a quicker set will be OK.

 

[Philly]

I was talking to Mike Wenzloff about this - he said he has had some spalted beech impregnated that was really soft. Made a huge difference to its strength (it was used for saw handles), cost was about the same as he paid for the timber, he says.
Would be interested to find a UK source for this.
Cheers
Philly

 

[ivan]

Electronic components are often impregnated (ie transformers) so there may be something on the web there about "vacuum impregnation".

Polyester resin (as used in grp) is very cheap, but slightly pinkish in colour. There are casting resins for encapsulation that are clear, water-like. The firm Glassplies will supply, telephone can be found from websearch, but no website last time I used them. They can advise on catalyst use for the slow set. Publish a useful set of notes, 20 odd pages, used to be FOC.

Polyester shrinks on setting (epoxy does not) but either should be OK to stabilise plane infills.

 

[Mikey R]

Tony, I would guess that the technique that works for zinc would be different enough that maybe it would not work so well with timber. I suppose zinc platers would also want quite a large minimum order?

Philly, did Mike say who he got to impregnate the wood? Ahem.

Ivan, it seems to me to use this method you'd need to laminate your infill from maybe 6mm strips - could be a cool look, but wouldn't look like a traditional infill, if thats what the builder was after.