Thuya & Amboyna wood... do they need to be stabilized?

Hi Stacy,
It's she'd life sos stabilising resin. Yes they were under vacuum. But the real question was how can I rinse them off so I could soak them in the denatured alcohol. And if you think the denatured alcohol would work as well as the acetone.
 
While I haven't used SOS, I understand it is supposed to work OK for home stabilizing.

The quality of your vacuum chamber and methods greatly affects the outcome.
You say they are "floating" in the resin? They should have a weight holding them under the resin surface while vacuuming. Either a metal grate or a heavy plate works fine. The amount of vacuum time under high vacuum ( 27" or more if you can get it) is also important. While softer and punky wood will soak the resin up like a sponge in a day, harder and denser wood can take a week or longer.

I'm not sure why you would want to wipe them down with alcohol or acetone?
Just take out of the stabilizing tank, let drain on a screen rack for a while, wrap tight in aluminum foil, pop in a 225°F convection oven, and cure for an hour or so.

Cushing or Greenberg Woods will likely chime in with more technical info..
 
Paul Checa said:
Hi all,
So I've been trying to stabilize thuya and camphor burlwood for about a month now and they still float so I contacted my go to teacher for stabilizing wood and he sent me this thread so I thought I'd give it a try.
So WHT should I do if they've been soaking in resin for almost a month. Do I boil the mi water to remove the resin. Just wash it off in cold water. Wipe it off with a clean cloth and then with alcohol? What should I before soaking them. In acetone. And for industrial acetone I'm from Mexico and I can't find any down her I found denatured alcohol 99.99% is that ok to use?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Im with stacy in that I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish? if you want to try to "get rid" of the resin, boiling in water will definitely NOT accomplish that. denatured alcohol will likely also do nothing. soaking in acetone **might** help, but you would need to soak for a LONG time, and probably need to change the acetone several times.

If, however, you want to try to go ahead and cure whatever resin has gotten in to the wood, then do asd stacy says - drain on wire rack for a while, wrap in foil, and bake in the oven...

Not sure if that really helps???
 
Ok sorry I don't think I made myself clear. Haha
I read all the thread and it said that they soaked them in acetone to get rid of the sap or oils. So I thought mine probably had that sap or oil because even though I had them under vacuum at 57 cmHg (23 inHg) weighted down fully covered in SOS 3.0 stabilizing resin for more than 30 days (at least 12 to 18 hrs working vacuum and the rest of the time under resting vacuum) never decompressing except 3 timesin the 30 days to check if they were done. They would still float and weigh the same. So I didn't see the point in cooking them since they obviously hadn't absorbed the resin.
So my question was, how should I whipe them down to start from scratch. I want to start again by soaking them in denatured 99.99% pure alcohol for a week to let all the sap and oils out and then try the stabilizing again.
(am I makong sense now? )
 
Cushing H. said:
Im with stacy in that I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish? if you want to try to "get rid" of the resin, boiling in water will definitely NOT accomplish that. denatured alcohol will likely also do nothing. soaking in acetone **might** help, but you would need to soak for a LONG time, and probably need to change the acetone several times.

If, however, you want to try to go ahead and cure whatever resin has gotten in to the wood, then do asd stacy says - drain on wire rack for a while, wrap in foil, and bake in the oven...

Not sure if that really helps???
Click to expand...
HI Cushing just wrote a much more detailed explanation. Maybe that will help us get the full picture. Let me know if your answer changes after reading
 
Ill be honest, i think you guys are vastly overcomplciating things.

Thuya burl is so desired because of its oils, they give it a silky, leatherlike feel and smell wonderufl.

I had some thuya burl stabilized, yeah it didnt take it perfectly but it works. All this soaking in solvent and what not is just overkill.
 
The thuya I had stabilized by WSSI was sticky for a very long time. Maybe a year or more. Acetone helped a little, but time was the only thing that solved it. It wasn't the resin, but the oils that were leeching out.
The red camphor burl took something like ten years before it wasn't sticky anymore. I also think the red camphor burl wasn't really a good handle wood even after stabilizing. It just didn't feel "right". I came across a test handle last week while moving boxes of wood into the shop. It has to be 20 years since it was stabilized. Looks good, just doesn't feel right. maybe I'll sand it down again and see how it is.
 
Cure them and see what happens. Let us know.

Almost all the thuya and camphor burl I know of people using are for making fancy jewelry box top inlays. They use it unstabilized and it smells wonderful. One chap near me made a five drawer lingerie chest with the drawer fronts in camphor burl.
 
Will do. I just put them back in the vacuum I'll give em a week and then cure them after a 72 hr soak under pressure. I'll send some pics when done!

Thanks to all for the imput!
 
You need to make sure you are releasing pressure once there’s no longer air coming out of the scales and letting them sit in the chamber for twice as long as they were under pressure. That seems to be a pretty standard practice recommend and from my understanding once you release the vacuum it will help force resin into the material deeper than if you just took them out without letting them soak. So as an example of you let the scales sit for 3 days under vacuum then you need to let them continue to soak in the resin for 6 days after releasing the vacuum.
 
Hi Joshua.

So what I do in a perfect world with burls that want to work with me (buckeye for example) is:
-Vacuum soak them until they don't float anymore (about 12 hrs or so).
-Pressure soak for 72 hrs in a pressure pot (68 psi)
-take them out and drain them and then cook them in the oven for about 6 hrs.

Are you saying I should also let them soak at regular atmosphere for twice as much time after i soaked them under pressure?
 
I would leave them in the vacuum chamber for 24 hours in this case then before moving on to your next step.
 
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