Metal stabilising chamber

[George Watkins]

hello folks

I don't do much stabilising as the majority of the ozzy burr that I use is very dense and doesn't absorb any of the stabilisng liquid.

I did buy some burr horse chestnut a whilie ago and it was too soft to turn so I do stabilise the really highly figured stuff. At first I made an acrylic chamber which fell to pieces after a chemical reaction, I later found out you need pvc not acylic!!




I got a local welder to make me a steel chamber which works great, its a 1/4" thick tube about 24" tall by 5" wide, it has a 1/2" thick base for stability.
I used 10mm acrylic with bsp fitting for the lid, you can use acrylic for the lid as it never comes into contact with the liquid.
the only downside is you have to watch and control the initial bubbling from the top looking down, which takes a bit of practice.

 

[George Watkins]

I forgot to say!

the seal between the acrylic and the tube is self adhesive neoprene of e-bay.

I use cactus juice and stick fast, I cant tell the difference between the two.

 

[rowdyyates115]

Love it - whats the difference in price between cactus juice and stick-fast?

Need to have a go at this....

 

[George Watkins]

Love it - whats the difference price between cactus juice and stick-fast?

Need to have a go at this....

if you buy the 2 gallon kit of cactus juice and DONT get any customs charges you will save £10 to £15 per gallon over buying the stickfast, if you do get customs charges they are the same price or sometimes the juice will work out more expensive.

 

[Vic Perrin]

Very interesting George

 

[paulm]

Thats very interesting George, thanks. I'm interested in stabilising some of my own wood which I do at the moment with ca because I dont' think I ever have enough to warrant buying a gallon of stabilizing liquid which would go off before I even used a litre of it. Have you ever thought about selling small amounts of Cactus Juice? Just a thought.

 

[George Watkins]

Hi Paul

no that's something I've never considered, I think it would be difficult to do as a gallon comes with a pre measured bottle of catalyst and once catalyzed the shelf life begins. I did consider offering a stabilizing service but its another very expensive/labour intensive process which would make it too expensive to do.

 

[brody2123]

Thanks for sharing George. This is something I'm going to have a go at this year. Might go on the salvage and fire the welder up over the weekend.

 

[Bill Mooney]

Thanks for the info George it's something I've thought about for a while as I already use a vacuum pump with my chuck.

 

[wm460]

Very interesting George.

 

[Penpal]

Plenty of info answering many of my questions, great to see you talking Rowdy long time no see mate hope everything is OK with you. I am about having to chuck out heaps of offcuts etc it hurts.

Peter.

 

[Jim]

Thanks for that George, being a novice on this can you tell why you went for tall and round rather than small and square? Just that it would have been easier to have seen from the top on a square box ..

 

[George Watkins]

Round is just what the welder had in stock at the time and is also what the majority of chambers are so I went with it, having now used it- round is both an advantage and disadvantage.
The wood must be submerged at all times, when you fist get your gallon that's fine as you have plenty on hand but as you complete each batch of wood less resin is available to use until the point where you cant even cover one blank!
with a round chamber there is more room around the blank and so you need more resin to cover it, if the chamber was square the problem would be less of an issue but sits still there. I found the best way round it was to use glass beads, when i'm getting near the last of my resin I put the wood in to the bottom of the chamber then pour beads around it helping to fill the volume and use less resin to cover it.

you only need to see from the top of the surface of the resin to the underside of the lid, so in some ways the height of the chamber isn't important, it just means you can get more in.

Really short chambers are a pain to use as there isn't enough of a gap between the resin and the lid, when you first pull vacum you have a huge amount of air being pulled out of the wood and heading to the surface, this can foam up and rise upwards if you don't control the bleed valve and introduce the vacum gradually. The more gap you have between the resin and top the easier it is to control and the quicker you can get up to full vacum and leave it to do its job for a few hours.
Its always best to fit a catch tank between the chamber and the pump just in case you do accidentally allow the foaming to get too high and enter the vacum pipe, if it reached the pump, its knackered and they are quite pricey to replace.

there is a video i did of the initial foaming,this was on the acrylic chamber before it broke!!

foaming here

 

[Bill Mooney]

thanks George,that was well worth watching.

 

[Jim]

Thanks for that George, very informative ..

 

[paulm]

Right now then, I've just ordered the chamber and vac pump so now for some cactus juice or the like. Wasn't there something else similar that you could get in the UK?

 

[George Watkins]

yes the stick fast system from turners retreat Paul

 

[paulm]

Thanks George, thats that ordered. Hopefully this will let me fix up the roots and flaky stuff so that I don't have to saturate it in ca. What sort of pressure and how long do you leave it soaking for?

 

[George Watkins]

Thanks George, thats that ordered. Hopefully this will let me fix up the roots and flaky stuff so that I don't have to saturate it in ca. What sort of pressure and how long do you leave it soaking for?

hi Paul, you don't use pressure to stabilize its done by vacuum.

Full vacuum depends on your pump and atmospheric conditions but it should be between 26 - 29hg. Leave the pump running and your chamber at full vacuum until no bubbles are visibly rising, which is normally 3 -4 hours, if the wood has any moisture in it (which you don't want any MC to successfully stabilize) you will get champagne bubbles which will never stop. Release the vacuum and make sure there is plenty of resin above the wood as over the next few hours the resin level will drop, if the wood isn't covered by the resin at any point you will need to start again as air will have been pulled back in. I normally leave mine overnight to soak but as a general rule you want to wait at least twice as long as it took to vacuum.
hope this helps

 

[paulm]

hi Paul, you don't use pressure to stabilize its done by vacuum.

Full vacuum depends on your pump and atmospheric conditions but it should be between 26 - 29hg. Leave the pump running and your chamber at full vacuum until no bubbles are visibly rising, which is normally 3 -4 hours, if the wood has any moisture in it (which you don't want any MC to successfully stabilize) you will get champagne bubbles which will never stop. Release the vacuum and make sure there is plenty of resin above the wood as over the next few hours the resin level will drop, if the wood isn't covered by the resin at any point you will need to start again as air will have been pulled back in. I normally leave mine overnight to soak but as a general rule you want to wait at least twice as long as it took to vacuum.
hope this helps

Thanks George, I didn't know what the opposite of pressure(psi) was but meant vacuum(hg).