PVA end grain sealer

[Harry Gremminger]

just watched Glenn Lucas's bowl video, he uses a PVA sealer to coat the end grain of his bowls. It's a universal PVA adhesive, sealer, primer and concrete additive. I did a search and can't find it in the U.S. Home Depot has concrete bonding adhesive though. Anyone ever hear of this? I'm looking for something I can get locally that won't cost a lot.

[Brian Brown]

PVA is polyvinyl acetate AKA Elmer's glue. OK, not really, but it is commonly used in glues like Elmers, or Titebond. Many wood turners use a watered down white or yellow glue for an end grain sealer. Try searching the forum for glue end grain sealer.

[mark ravensdale]

A sometimes cheaper alternative is to buy the Pva glue they sell for kids to use (they use it in schools and such) water it down by abt 25% and that works just great, I use it to seal pen blanks I make from larger timbers, just dip both ends and it dries over night.

[Chip Sutherland]

Once on vacation, on a whim, we decided to harvest some wood from the backwoods. With no Anchorseal, we used an old can of beige latex paint. Cheap, cheap...worked just fine. We were more worried about the time from fresh cut to traveling back ( several days) to our garages to use AnchorSeal. I never removed the paint. The latex did soak up into the pores a bit but it was turned off along the way. I know my AnchorSeal is going to run out at a bad time...so I kept my ceiling paint and give it a stir occassionally. Never tried the water-down glue...but my Elmers bottles are not big enough to bother with.

[Dan Jechura]

I used old latex paint to seal the ends of fresh cut ambrosia maple. Left it on for 6 months until I could get to it. I cut into the log and found the log highly spalted and the ambrosia color gone. I check 1/2 the logs and the same thing happened. I had cut one of the logs when I got them , finished turn 2 bowls and ruff turn one, anchorsealed the ruff turned bowl. Put it in a paper sack and forgot about it. Just before Christmas I got the bowl out, it was dry enough, finished turned it. The color was not gone and it did not spalt. Later on I read some where Latex paint was only good for a couple months. So I will only use anchorseal unless its only going to be a month. I do a lot of apple and it cracks very easy and Anchorseal works well. I did make some bowl out of the spalted no color ambrosia maple and they had a neat effect.

Dan J.
Temperance, mi.

[Chip Sutherland]

Dan...Thanks for that input. Sounds like I was lucky using latex because most of the wood was turned within a few months. Latex works in a pinch but don't wait too long to turn/reseal it.

[Harry Gremminger]

I'm looking for something to put on rough turned bowls. I've only turned 7 and one of them cracked already.I'll try the watered down glue, if that doesn't work I'll get the anchorseal. These are practice bowls, so I'll
practice the sealing and drying also. Thanks to all...

[mark ravensdale]

Yep latex paint/emulsion they all work, I once ran out of chestnut end seal and was forced to use an old can of pink latex paint/emulsion it worked a treat and my wood pile looked ohh so pretty!!!

[Rick McQuay]

Last spring I sealed some holly ends with glue size, left the bark on, and it dried perfectly.