Thread: Stabilizing wood??

I keep reading in the forums how wood scales being made from stabilized wood. Im not familiar with this is, what exactly is stabilizing wood, how do you stabilize wood, and why do you want to do it?
Thanks Tony

I know part of the answer (what & why), but not the other part (how). Stabilizing any natural material is to prevent it slowly warping over time. I have always used hardwood which is thoroughly dry so I have never done anything special to stabilize it. I am told that horn & antler always need to be stabilized. That's all I know.

Stabilizing is a process where the wood is impregnated with some kind of stabilizing agent such as a polymer resin. It essentially makes the wood almost into a plastic. The wood becomes heavier, more stable, and much more resistant to water (some methods claim that no additional finishing is necessary at all).

Look out though, there are lots of people that say they sell "stabilized wood" and they don't necessarily have the same definition. Dig deeper to find out if their wood is treated with the industrial process where high pressure forces polymer resin completely through the wood (this one will be near plastic) or if they've done some vacuum treatment w/ wood hardener or their own resin at home.

And not to be rude at all, you can find lots of info on this if you google it.

It is a matter of degree. So be wary. Wood that has been dried properly can be said to be stabilized. Wood, however, changes dimension in accordance with temp & humidity. Wood treated with paint, varnish, polyurethane reduces this movement. Green wood, which will move, check, warp the most as it loses its high water content, can be stabilized with PEG. This is polyethylene glycol. Green wood is immersed in this, at particular temps, and for periods of time in order to retain the present grain, shape, and other characteristics the piece has. Supposedly the wood becomes like plastic and does not move.
This treatment doesn't work with very dense, oily, or waxy woods.
For razor scales a kiln dried, straight grained, piece of wood should not warp with minimal treatment, ie polyurethane, ca dip, ren wax.
My 2 cents,
Ed
quicknicker

mot the timm if its a burl wood i have it stabilized tho as with the rest of the world there are exceptions ironwood burl will not take any resin

you can get away with a good piece of amboyna burl but i prefer it stabilized

the 2 bigest places that i truse to do my stabilizing are K&G and WSSI there are 2 or 3 others that are good also but those 2 are the big players

when looking for wood on ebay i never trust a homm stabilized block as i have had too many problems with it

as a rule if i see soem wood i like i am willing to take a shot one a new upstart stabilizing Co. i buy one or maybe 2 blocks to see how ther wood works if its good then great i order more. but if its bad im only out 30or so bucks

I do stabilizing for myself. Doing it at home is a large process. I have a dedicated vacuum pump and a variety of pressure tanks: some with inserts for resins that require setting in immersion, some for evaporative solutions, some for full forced immersion this uses a bag system and I have special tanks that work with solutions that react with the standard tanks.
There are suggestions online for doing this at home using thin finishes and resins; there are also systems that utilize heat to thin the solution, release some air from the wood and when cooling allows for some vacuum. I dislike the systems discussed first off because they heat a highly reactive chemical on a stove, they also don't allow for control of the amount of vacuum or vacuum release, another reason I dislike these systems is that they don't get as high of vacuum (or is it low) this keeps the penetration fairly shallow and not full. With my system I get full penetration in a 6" square block.
With items like scales you might get enough penetration because they are so thin, but because of which they are likely to warp as well with the uneven curing of the solution. This would suggest to use a slightly thicker piece of wood. This problem is almost eliminated in professional systems.

Just thoughts.

-G