Stabilizing wood for knife handles.

[Lasse Hilbrandt]

I have a large piece of oak burl that I want to cut into blanks for knife handles. There are many small cracks in the burl and I was thinking of stabilizing the blanks with cactus juice.

Now Im beginning to doubt that cactus juice is the right resin to use. Im wondering of the resin will run out of the cracks before they are cured ?

Anyone has experience with that ?

[Jerry Wright]

Don't know about cactus juice, but wood turners use poly ethylene glycol (sold as PEG at Woodcraft) to stabilize burls.

[John K Jordan]

I have a large piece of oak burl that I want to cut into blanks for knife handles. There are many small cracks in the burl and I was thinking of stabilizing the blanks with cactus juice.

Now Im beginning to doubt that cactus juice is the right resin to use. Im wondering of the resin will run out of the cracks before they are cured ?

Anyone has experience with that ?

Lasse,

I have no experience with that but a friend of mine, John Tarpley, might. https://www.morewoodturningmagazine.com/writer_profile.php?writerid=26

I have "stabilized" small blanks for woodturning by soaking with very think CA glue. This saturates the wood where I can get to them from the pores but of course doesn't fill cracks. Some people fill the cracks with other things like epoxy or with fine sawdust then apply CA glue. I don't like the look of this.

I learned a trick from woodturner John Lucas that works very well on turning, perhaps on knife handles as well: he wet sands with thin CA glue! Put thin CA glue on sandpaper and sand by hand across the crack. This fills the crack with a slurry of CA and fine dust and looks better than simply packing the crack with dust and dousing with CA. You do have to wear gloves or something to keep fingers from sticking. Maybe try this on a piece and see what you think. The times I used this it made small checks/cracks disappear.

BTW, I'm sure you know this but a large burl will probably be very wet inside and the pieces cut for the knife handles need to be dried well before doing anything.

Ask John Tarpley about this (and let us know what he says!) He uses a vacuum system to stabilize blanks for woodturning. I don't remember if he uses Cactus Juice or something else.

JKJ

[Lasse Hilbrandt]

I can't get that link to work, nor can I find the webpage?

[John K Jordan]

I can't get that link to work, nor can I find the webpage?

Hmmm...., just tried it again and it works from here.

Try searching Google for John Tarpley woodturner for a bio in More Woodturning magazine. Let me know if it doesn't work and I'll call him and ask if it's OK to give you his email address. I don't think it would be a problem since he listed it on that web page. But I hate to put it in a message here without asking.

JKJ