Stabilizing wood with 2k epoxy resin WIP

FredyCro

FredyCro

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There has been a lot of topics on stabilizing wood. The general opinion is that for a diy stabilizer, the home equipment and acryl stabilizing resin (like cactus juice) can't achieve the professional results. After my first two tries I would definetly agree with this.

I have been toying and researching the idea of using a 2k resin for stabilizing wood. There is almost no information on this topic. While browsing some German forums I found out that some makers use a long curing 2k resin to stabilize wood.

I ordered the resin that everyone is using and will try this on some wood I currently have. I will do a try run and cut through the block sized pieces to see how the penetration is. I will use different woods to see what works and what not (I will stay with the non—oily and non-exotic wood sorts, probably maple, walnut and poplar burl and some spalted apple). The surplus resin I will probably use for doing mycarta.

Here is the YouTube video showing the procedure (same as with any heat curing resin minus the oven part) and the product of choice.
 
It is short for 2 component epoxy. What we call two-part epoxy.

Some of these resins are very low viscosity and used for spray coating and surface penetration. I doubt they will be even close to a proper mono-acrylic resin like Polaroid B-72 or the others used in stabilization.
 
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scott kozub said:
I've never heard of this. What exactly is 2k resin and what is it normally used for.
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2k stands for 2 components. Like the epoxy glue that we use for the handles, it consists of a resin and a hardener. The specific epoxy resin shown in the video cures over time period of 72h, and has a long enough window which allows to pull the vacuum and soak the wood in the resin before it starts hardening. Obviously once it is mixed it cannot be reused.
 
Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith said:
It is short for 2 component epoxy. What we call two-part epoxy.

Some of these resins are very low viscosity and used for spray coating and surface penetration. I doubt they will be even close to a proper mono-acrylic resin like Polaroid B-72 or the others used in stabilization.
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The resin at hand doesn't look to be particularly low viscosity (enough to pentrate wood under vacuum though) and is primarily used for casting thick coats due to week thermal reaction when mixing big quantities (up to 10cm thick/15 l at once).

Have you given the video a minute, his results look very tough? He mentions that with spalted woods the results were more durable then with cactus juice.

For me this is the last try before resorting to professional stabilization. The reason I am trying this in the first place is that in Europe I couldn't find anyone that could take small quantities at an acceptable price.
 
I looked at the video. I don't see any shots of the wood ground into a handle or cut up. All it shows is wet soaked wood. Not saying it was useless, just definitely doesn't appear to be the same as a mono-acrylic resin that is polymerized in stabilization.

For filling voids and open places, like in burl caps, I suppose that epoxy will work. I can't see it penetrating very far into solid wood, though.

I would suggest dying the epoxy some color like red and stabilizing some curly maple to see how deep and well it penetrates. Cut the block in half and take a look. Regular stabilizing resins go all the way to the center.
 
FredyCro said:
2k stands for 2 components. Like the epoxy glue that we use for the handles, it consists of a resin and a hardener. The specific epoxy resin shown in the video cures over time period of 72h, and has a long enough window which allows to pull the vacuum and soak the wood in the resin before it starts hardening. Obviously once it is mixed it cannot be reused.
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Will be interesting to see the results. Good luck with the experiment. Keep in mind working time (pot life), drying time, handling time, and curing time are usually all different. It cures in 72 hours, but may only be workable for a few. You may be able to thin it with the recommended thinner to help penetrate, but this may decrease working time. More importantly- have you been to the gruener see? Been on the list to scuba there in summer and walk around in winter but scuba is prohibited now.
 
The author of the video says that it will penetrate 100 % with softer woods. He uses the blocks for pen blanks. About 3 mins in the video he shows grapevine that he stabilized.

Coloring is a great idea to see the penetration easier, thanks Stacey.
 
Dominick Maone said:
Will be interesting to see the results. Good luck with the experiment. Keep in mind working time (pot life), drying time, handling time, and curing time are usually all different. It cures in 72 hours, but may only be workable for a few. You may be able to thin it with the recommended thinner to help penetrate, but this may decrease working time. More importantly- have you been to the gruener see? Been on the list to scuba there in summer and walk around in winter but scuba is prohibited now.
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The handling time is officially 8 hours, I am looking forward to the experiment.

Unfortunately not, I haven't been to Grüner See, I have some friends that went diving though, should be beautiful.
 
I have never looked into various resins for stabilizing, but a main feature is how will it finish after shaping and sanding? Will it take Tru Oil (for example)?
 
TRfromMT said:
I have never looked into various resins for stabilizing, but a main feature is how will it finish after shaping and sanding? Will it take Tru Oil (for example)?
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There is a whole topic about finishing stabilized wood on BF. My experience is that stabilization with an acrilic resin will take oil readily. I have only one knife w professional stabilized wood, that will also take it, but not soak it up, its more like a surface finish to highlight the wood. Generally, the whole point of stabilization is that wood doesn't need extra finish, but just good sanding and polishing.
 
FredyCro said:
There is a whole topic about finishing stabilized wood on BF. My experience is that stabilization with an acrilic resin will take oil readily. I have only one knife w professional stabilized wood, that will also take it, but not soak it up, its more like a surface finish to highlight the wood. Generally, the whole point of stabilization is that wood doesn't need extra finish, but just good sanding and polishing.
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I understand. I've finished maybe a hundred blanks/scale sets. Maybe more. I'm like an old milk cow - I just keep coming into the barn every day. I stick with what works, which is whatever K&G does. I once had a blow out and exposed a pocket of GFlex in a hidden tang knife. It looked like a fiberglass patch in the middle of the wood (it was a practice piece, so I didn't care). Point is, I learned that GFlex will not take finish at all.

Voids and worm holes in heavily spalted material that is stabilized by K&G will finish up just fine and does not look like a gob of plastic in the middle of the wood.

Anyway, just mulling this over. I am a big fan of experimenting, so go at it!
 
TRfromMT said:
I understand. I've finished maybe a hundred blanks/scale sets. Maybe more. I'm like an old milk cow - I just keep coming into the barn every day. I stick with what works, which is whatever K&G does. I once had a blow out and exposed a pocket of GFlex in a hidden tang knife. It looked like a fiberglass patch in the middle of the wood (it was a practice piece, so I didn't care). Point is, I learned that GFlex will not take finish at all.

Voids and worm holes in heavily spalted material that is stabilized by K&G will finish up just fine and does not look like a gob of plastic in the middle of the wood.

Anyway, just mulling this over. I am a big fan of experimenting, so go at it!
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Thanks, as said if I had a professional service for a price of 6 dollars for block in Europe I would go for it. From other videos of the pen maker that posted in YouTube it looks that it will finish good. I will post my results, as you say it is an experiment.
 
I prepped the wood. From left to right, poplar burl, spalted apple, maple burl and a piece of walnut (walnut was a long, wide board that had a intersecting branch on the end with some heart wood and curly/burly appearance). All the wood was dry, but I will put it on the radiator at home to drive off any remaining moisture. It was also a new tool day for my small shop.

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kbright said:
WOW! What a very clean floor!
How do you use those tennis racquet things for knife making?
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Haha, I actually vacuumed for the first time after three months before taking the pic. On the pic of the saw you can see how the floor usually looks. The racquets serve no purpose at all, I actually played with one for fun. On the other side of the room are my bicycles from my previous hobby..
 
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My simple homebrew set up. I mixed about 0.6 kg of resin. Pulled vacuum yesterday for about 4 hours and left the wood to soak overnight. The resin was slightly denser in the morning but not much (after about 11 h of activating). I used the resin leftovers for 2 blocks of jeans/pants mycarta. The cure time is about 72 h. I actually did a sample of resin to test how long it will need to cure at my room temperature and to see how it thickens before I proceeded with the wood. I didn't want to have a block of cured resin with my handle material in them. I will cut up the blanks next week to see how the penetration is. Unfortunately I didn't write down the weight of the blocks beforehand, but they took a lot of resin. Spalted apple seems to got very dark and it took tons of resin and is very heavy.
 
Looks like it is drying just fine. It is really cristal clear and not sticky anymore. You can also see the two sheaths of mycarta (one is dark blue jeans with yellow paper as liner, the other khaki, looks more like dark chocolate now, with green liner).
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My hand for size reference.
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I think that in next batch I will try my hand at g10 with some fiberglass sheaths. Or pine cone or alu honeycomb hybrid handles. I have handle material for like 200 knifes. At this speed I won't need more for another 20 years.
 
I was under the impression that you would vacuum it for sometime to remove the air from the wood and resin then put it under pressure to help force it into the wood better. So you would need a container that can handle negative and positive pressure

I used to have a good relationship with several manufactures of epoxy and other resins. One told me that the best way to reduce the viscosity is 1 part MEK to 3 parts acetone added to the epoxy after mixing A&B together. Quantity of thinner is dependent on the resin and desired thinness.

Acrylic resin generally start out thinner then most others so they may make a good starting point
 
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