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Wanted Stabilizing wood

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Hardening wood you say? Chemically you say?
 

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Just trying to be helpful Kev.
As always.

😬


Ahhhh. I get it, crush the little blue pills, mix with white spirit, liberally soak the bowl blanks and voila, rock hard wood.

I took it to a weird place before, i apologise! 🤗
 
I agree with the CA glue principal. It's cheap, easy and works very well.

Here's a project that shows it in action. A piece of ash that no-one would think could be used for turning - it was rotten and you could push bits out with your thumb! I managed to mount it on some harder sections between centres, turned a tenon chucking point and used large jaws to hold it and then used my best sharpest tools to turn it to the rough shape I wanted. Once there, I flushed the soft sections with CA glue (thin) and carried on turning. Once to the final shape, I repeated the CA glue and sanded and finished. The CA gives a lovely shine to areas that really should be on the workshop floor!

The "eye" in the finished photo was the worst bit. Now it shines!

I get my CA glue on line in larger bottles but this method uses surprisingly little of it.

Good luck.

B

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I agree with the CA glue principal. It's cheap, easy and works very well.

Here's a project that shows it in action. A piece of ash that no-one would think could be used for turning - it was rotten and you could push bits out with your thumb! I managed to mount it on some harder sections between centres, turned a tenon chucking point and used large jaws to hold it and then used my best sharpest tools to turn it to the rough shape I wanted. Once there, I flushed the soft sections with CA glue (thin) and carried on turning. Once to the final shape, I repeated the CA glue and sanded and finished. The CA gives a lovely shine to areas that really should be on the workshop floor!

The "eye" in the finished photo was the worst bit. Now it shines!

I get my CA glue on line in larger bottles but this method uses surprisingly little of it.

Good luck.

B

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Thats beautiful, bet it was a pipper with so much air during turning
 
Yes and yes, it's gone very soft and big chunks get torn out rather than cut, stabilising with resin hardens it so that it doesn't fall apart while turning and finishing.
Hi Stig i hope you all are well . I use this Cuprinol it works well with great results View attachment 124161
Do you use it with a pressure pot or just keep on soaking the wood?
No just paint it on it works rea well
 
Thats beautiful, bet it was a pipper with so much air during turning

Hi, yes, it had it's challenges! I had to concentrate very hard, firstly to turn it without breaking bits off and secondly to keep my fingers intact. Much to my surprise I managed both. I sell some stuff but I won't sell that one - it's got a lot of my determination and skills wrapped up in it.
 
Hi, yes, it had it's challenges! I had to concentrate very hard, firstly to turn it without breaking bits off and secondly to keep my fingers intact. Much to my surprise I managed both. I sell some stuff but I won't sell that one - it's got a lot of my determination and skills wrapped up in it.
I'd be really proud and want to keep that too.
 
Took a short (45minute) walk I to town this morning to visit screwfix and pick up a couple tins of wood hardener, not the same brand as @Mick p but it does the same thing, the same bottle in B&Q is almost £6 more 😮
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While in town I stopped by poundland and picked up some 2part resin and superglue, also picked up some pearl effect cours that I want to experiment with.
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The ronseal stuff worked OK for me, first time I used it I put the bits in my degassing chamber, it crazed the acrylic lid of the degassing chamber so didn't want to do the same thing with the next lot so just stuck the wood in a bath of it & let it soak in. when I took the wood out the bath I just tipped the remains of the liquid back in the tin. You should have got your superglue from screwfix while you were there, they sell 50g bottles with bulk saving on 3 bottles, it's alwost like water in that it is very runny & works great in small cracks where a more viscous resin may not penetrate.
 
The ronseal stuff worked OK for me, first time I used it I put the bits in my degassing chamber, it crazed the acrylic lid of the degassing chamber so didn't want to do the same thing with the next lot so just stuck the wood in a bath of it & let it soak in. when I took the wood out the bath I just tipped the remains of the liquid back in the tin. You should have got your superglue from screwfix while you were there, they sell 50g bottles with bulk saving on 3 bottles, it's alwost like water in that it is very runny & works great in small cracks where a more viscous resin may not penetrate.
The glue and resin was an impulse buy because I was in the shop and saw it, I only went in to get a drink. I'm looking forward to trying out the pearl colours, I got them thinking I could somehow mix them with the resin but having watched a few YouTube videos on the stuff it seems it sets like a resin and is usually used to create raised details on greetings cards etc, will be fun experimenting with them.
The piece on the lathe that I bought the hardener for soaked up almost a whole 500ml bottle with no water drips below, it was very very thirsty, the tin says 2 hours drying/setting time but I'm gonna leave it over night, the remaining hardener from that bottle was poured over the end grain of the 2 pieces of birch that I started this thread about.
 
The glue and resin was an impulse buy because I was in the shop and saw it, I tend to buy superglue in bulk, once you start using it to fill small cracks & decayed wood it is surprising just how much you can get through, I've had myself looking all over a bit of wood looking for where it is running out lol. The other thing I tend to do is apply it a little at a time as I have had in not cure in the middle of a piece of wood because I applied to much at once. The outside must have cured quickly preventing the centre from curing properly.
On large splits or bigger holes I tend to use a resin fill but on very fine cracks it doesn't seem to penetrate the surface very deep where as the superglue does.
 
The glue and resin was an impulse buy because I was in the shop and saw it, I tend to buy superglue in bulk, once you start using it to fill small cracks & decayed wood it is surprising just how much you can get through, I've had myself looking all over a bit of wood looking for where it is running out lol. The other thing I tend to do is apply it a little at a time as I have had in not cure in the middle of a piece of wood because I applied to much at once. The outside must have cured quickly preventing the centre from curing properly.
On large splits or bigger holes I tend to use a resin fill but on very fine cracks it doesn't seem to penetrate the surface very deep where as the superglue does.
Definately something I'll be looking at buying, I have an enormous amount of silver birch spread out around the school grounds, the stuff at the bottom of the piles is beyond use but everything else is still fairly solid to touch, will be bringing a fair bit of it in once I have a dry store place, the spalting that's showing through some of the pieces is amazing. Haven't even started to look at the mountain of oak I have.
 
Spent over an hour this morning taking very gentle scraping cuts to get it a bit more round to centre, if I push to hard the whole lathe and stand start bouncing, ive got to where I'm happy with nut it's still vibrating, I think the drive centre is moving in the wood so I've turned a tenon and reinforced it with 5minute epoxy (which actually takes half an hour 🤦‍♂️) hopefully this will stop any more unwanted movement at the drive end, my live centre has a teeny tiny bit of lateral play (cheap piece of rubbish from amazon) but it's not enough to cause the bounce I'm getting
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Overall I'm happy enough with the general shape I have, the top will eventually be reduced by 4 inches or so depending on how I go with the main body of the vessel, and as far as hollowing goes I will likely only be hollowing the top portion as I don't have a steady rest.
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7 hours of work and not much to show for it today, couldn't stop the damn thing from bouncing so had to keep it on slowest speed of 450 and take very light scraping cuts. Ended up removing about 5 inches from the end to see it made a difference to the bounce, it helped a little but not much, I think the headstock bearings are on the way out, I can feel a pulse in the back one. I've probably spent close to 4 hours sanding at 60grit just to get the shape I want and to remove the tear out and tool marks but I'm pretty happy with it so far, I've filled all cracks and bug holes on the main body and the tear out on the neck/flute with the blue 3D colour I got yesterday, it doesn't seem to soak into the wood and sets quite quickly, tomorrow I'll be back out sanding again. REALLY not looking forward to hollowing out.
 
Spent quite a while Sunday sanding, sanding, sanding then more sanding to get the outside cleaned up, still a few sanding marks to get out and a bit of coloured infill to apply in one or two spots, also started hollowing out and realised the wobble I keep getting is worse than I first thought, one section of the rim is 5mm thick whilst the opposite side is 10mm thick, pretty sure it's due to a combination of 2 things, the headstock bearings are old and wearing out and a cheap crappy live centre from amazon. The wobble also gets worse the more pressure I put on the piece either with the gouge or with sandpaper. Yesterday was spent gingerly hollowing out as much as I can, yesterday I managed to get in about 4 inches deep and started getting more catches than cuts, one catch caught a bit of flesh between my gouge and tool rest, it hurt like hell so I stopped and went indoors, today was pretty much identical, a few hours spent sheer scraping with the bowl gouge to gradually work my way into the vase, I was doing pretty well and managed to get down to about 6 inches deep, started to get a little complacent and next thing I know a catch rips the gouge from my hand and smacks me round the head with the handle, that had me seeing stars for a few seconds so swit hed everything off and went indoors without taking any pics or vidoe from today.


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