Easy and cheap way to stabilize scales

M

Mike_

Joined
Oct 28, 2015
Messages
7
I was searching around here for an easy way to stabilize wood and while I'm sure there must be at least a few threads on how to do it yourself, I couldn't find any. Here's how I did it.

Most of what I needed I already had, but here's what you'll need:

Stabilizing resin (I used Cactus Juice).

1 64oz mason jar with lid and ring. At my local Target they were $1.88 ea

1 Foodsaver T03-0023-01P wide-mouth mason jar sealer or equivalent:
http://www.foodsaver.com/accessories-and-parts/foodsaver-wide-mouth-jar-sealer/T03-0023-01P.html

1 Foodsaver accessory hose, cut in half:
http://www.foodsaver.com/accessories-and-parts/foodsaver-accessory-hose/T17-0059.html

1 vacuum pump. I ordered a cheap hand pump from Amazon, but I think Harbor Freight has them as well.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T3W3FB2

The vacuum pump I ordered had an adapter to attach it to the Foodsaver accessory hose. I fashioned a weight by cutting a paint stir stick into 3rds, stacking them on top of each other, drilling a hole through the center, and put a nut and bold through to hold them together. Once I put my scales in I slipped the paint stick into the jar and spread out the three sections, then put a heavy bolt and nuts on top of that to hold everything down. I covered the scales with Cactus Juice, put the lid and jar sealer on top. I was able to pull about a 30" vacuum with the pump, then I released it to let the lid seal on the jar. I'm sure I lost some of my vacuum in the process because I noticed the bubbles subsided a little when I did this, but I still had plenty of bubbles coming out after the lid popped and sealed. The nice thing about this was the hand pump draws the vacuum slowly, so there was absolutely no problem with the bubbles rising to the top of the jar and overflowing as seems to happen with electric pumps.

From this point I'll just finish with the rest of the instructions for the resin.

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In my opinion, the cheapest and easiest way to stabilize wood is to send it to K & G.
 
Let us know how it works - to check, after grinding the excess resin from wood, put the finished wood in a bowl of water to see if it sinks or floats. If sinks - good job. BTW, what wood are you using?

Ken H>
 
Ken H> said:
Let us know how it works - to check, after grinding the excess resin from wood, put the finished wood in a bowl of water to see if it sinks or floats. If sinks - good job. BTW, what wood are you using?
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Maple, Padauk, Cherry, Leopardwood, and Sycamore.
 
A lot of people who use similar method with cactus juice resin are quite happy with the results, and sure it is a nice way to seal the wood.
The quality of the job boils down to the quality of the resin used, the amount of vacuum applied and gets better if at the end of the "pulling" cycle one is able to increase the pressure to drive the resin deeper into the materials.
 
For what it is worth you didn't pull 30" of vacuum ... no one has ever done that.
29.92" is the theoretical maximum at sea level. Really good ( and expensive) lab equipment gets close to 29", but a food saver probably doesn't hit much over 24".
 
I noticed some people have mentioned letting wood sit for like a year per inch of material.
Is that the case if you send something to K & G? Does it have to be wood that has already dried or is that what they do there?
 
That's a general recommendation for air drying wood. The wood has to be dry to be stabilized, the stabilizing agent is going to fill in all the areas that water uses to migrate in and out.

The wood under vacuum will dry further until the energy available reaches equalization. If the wood isn't dry enough to start with ice crystals will form and block the stabilizing agent.

I've never actually used an outside vendor but I would think they would outright reject any material that is too wet to process.
 
I wish you the best with this.
I screwed around with the home do it yourself stabilization stuff and over the years and found its actually cheaper to send cut blocks to WSSI or K & G once they have sat in my shop and dried out to about 10% moisture.

Also buying already cut & stabilized blocks from Mark at It's a burl or a few other suppliers is even better because I rather spend my time, Designing, Grinding and making my knives. Good Luck to you.
 
Rhinoknives1 said:
I wish you the best with this.
I screwed around with the home do it yourself stabilization stuff and over the years and found its actually cheaper to send cut blocks to WSSI or K & G once they have sat in my shop and dried out to about 10% moisture.

Also buying already cut & stabilized blocks from Mark at It's a burl or a few other suppliers is even better because I rather spend my time, Designing, Grinding and making my knives. Good Luck to you.
Click to expand...

Some people doing this for a hobby enjoy the novelty of trying to make as much as possible in their own and by hand. It's like shooting , I love firearms and even though reloading isn't exactly cheaper I reload because I genuinely enjoy the hobby. I've been looking into trying to stabilize some of my own wood too. I'll be sure to try the cactus juice. I've seen an article somewhere someone had made a mixture using tar oil and 2 other ingredients I can't remember. I think they had mentioned it was a solution used by old timers to help stabilize wood on boats.

Cheers

Grumpy_grinder
 
One of the many benefits of reloading is that you can combine many of the available components that you would never be able to find on the shelf.
There is also the possibility of increased performance and accuracy when loading each bullet one at a time with attention to detail.
I've been there.
I've also been here for nearly two decades and have yet see anyone come close in their basement to what the stabilizing companies do without actually doing what the stabilizing companies do.
And those costs are so far above prohibitive, it's just simpler - and more effective - to use the post office.


grumpy_grinder said:
It's like shooting , I love firearms and even though reloading isn't exactly cheaper I reload because I genuinely enjoy the hobby.
Cheers
Grumpy_grinder
Click to expand...
 
Yugami said:
The wood under vacuum will dry further until the energy available reaches equalization. If the wood isn't dry enough to start with ice crystals will form and block the stabilizing agent./QUOTE]

Thats just not possible... when you pull a vacuum the boiling point drops, not the temperature. Even if it did freeze the ice would sublimate out rather quickly.
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Although I am a beginner at knife making, I have a lot of experience with stabilized wood that I used for turning. In my experience I have not yet found a home stabilized wood, other than something that was rather pinky to start with, that the stabilizer penetrated to any significant depth. I think that the pros utilize a pressure process to facilitate full stabilization of the block. If you cut a 1x2 handle block down the middle, check to see whether the center is stabilized or not. Placing a cut stabilized block in water overnight to check for swelling is also a good test. Perhaps Cactus Juice will work on scales not to exceed 3/8" if held at 29" vacuum until no bubbles come out. I would 't trust it for thicker pieces but would love to hear whether anyone had tested with good results with larger blocks using a home process. For now I'm sticking with wood stabilized by K&G.
 
hellspawn415 said:
Yugami said:
The wood under vacuum will dry further until the energy available reaches equalization. If the wood isn't dry enough to start with ice crystals will form and block the stabilizing agent.
Click to expand...

Thats just not possible... when you pull a vacuum the boiling point drops, not the temperature. Even if it did freeze the ice would sublimate out rather quickly.
Click to expand...

Some of this moisture is vaporized. This evaporation is. attended by the removal of sufficient heat from the boards to produce ice crystals on the surfaces thereof
Click to expand...

As the pressure inthe chamber is reduced, mois ture is drawn from Within each board to its surface, producing some evaporation,` with an attendant loss of heat. At a pressure in the region of 10-1 millimeters of mercury, the rate of evaporation produces sufficient heat loss to lower the temperature of the board surface to freezing (about 0 C.) and to for-m ice crystals on the board surfaces. It has been found that some 10% to 15% of the moisture content of the boards must be removed by evaporation for this freezing to occur
Click to expand...

But don't let facts get in the way of you opinions

Water Phase Change - Water to ice in 90 seconds using vacuum ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOYgdQp4euc
 
We're each somewhere on the scale between the guy who plants a tree for handle wood and waits for twenty years while harvesting and smelting his own volcanic sand and meteors for tamahagane, and the guy who hires a knifemaker to draw up a cool design and then sends it to China to have forty thousand made in a factory.
Every one of us does something in the process of making knives that would be better done by the guy that specializes in that process.
I couldn't agree more that stabilizing is one of those things that is best left to the guys who do it a lot, mostly because without proper equipment you don't really get the job done, but honestly- so is heat treating, and there's no justification at all for going out to the shop and grinding thirty blades just alike, when the waterjet guy and the machine shop would be tickled to have the work.
As long as people want handmade knives with a story, though, it's worth it to me to do it myself.
That said, I don't have a sawmill or a foundry or a rolling mill, so we each kind of set the parameters, don't we?
 
I will step in between Yugami and the others.

Temperature does drop as evaporation occurs. That is the principle that makes a freezers freeze meat and ice, and propane tanks get covered in frost.
Water will "boil out" of wood if there is excessive moisture content. The rapid evaporation can indeed cause a frost on the wood.

These facts of physics are not actually what we are talking about in this thread, though. We are discussing home vs professional stabilization. Wood to be stabilized needs to be at 10% or less moisture content. If that is followed, there is no issue with freeze-up. Additionally, the liquid stabilizing agent will disperse the water vapor fairly quickly.

Lets all step back and admit we are talking apples and oranges to some degree. Please keep it civil.
 
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