Tom Hutchinson
12-30-2018, 10:54 AM
I have recently acquired a large supply of highly spalted almost rotten soft maple. It has a lot of potential but needs some sort of stabilization. I chained sawed the 2' diametred trunk in to slabs (cookies) approximately 4" thick. They were then dried in my kiln down to 8-9% moisture and then flattened in the router sled.
At this point I decided to use epoxy as a hardening agent. Because my shop is difficult to get above 60 degrees in the winter I chose to use Total Boat cold weather epoxy. I cures at temperaturs from 35-60 degrees. That product has been quite successful and had hardened to a beautiful high gloss finish. However it took multiple pours to get this spongy wood saturated and at this point I have over well over $100 of epoxy in this one slab.
The question, is there a cheaper means ie. another material that could be used to harden materials like this?
Thanks,
Tom Hutchinson
At this point I decided to use epoxy as a hardening agent. Because my shop is difficult to get above 60 degrees in the winter I chose to use Total Boat cold weather epoxy. I cures at temperaturs from 35-60 degrees. That product has been quite successful and had hardened to a beautiful high gloss finish. However it took multiple pours to get this spongy wood saturated and at this point I have over well over $100 of epoxy in this one slab.
The question, is there a cheaper means ie. another material that could be used to harden materials like this?
Thanks,
Tom Hutchinson