Repairing a crack???

[Bill Bolen]

I was turning my first open ended end grain hollow form. It is a vase shape about 8” tall by 5” wide out of a nicely spalted piece of Birch. A crack opened up following one of the dark black spalt lines. The crack is now about 1/8” to 3/16” wide from top to bottom. I’ve read several posts about filling cracks with coffee, chalk or other powders. As I understand it the packing material is then filled with a coat of CA glue. Will this method work on a crack this wide? Do you tape over the inside of the crack to hold the fill material in place till the glue sets? I’ve never done this and am wondering how to hold the packing in place till it can be glued. Will it add any structural strength or is it merely a filler?
Bill

[Bob Hallowell]

Bill,
try 5min expoxy mixed with coffee. I have filled big voids with this. You might need to use some blue painters tape to hold it in on one side.

Bob

[Bernie Weishapl]

I use epoxy with coffee or sanding dust from whatever I am working on. Works good.

[Mike Vickery]

Yes it should work. I either use embossing powder and CA or 5 minute epoxy mixed with some coloring agent (acrylic artist ink, airbrush color or wood dye) thinned down a tad with DNA. With the second method you need to seal the wood real good or it with dye the surounding area.

[John Hart]

It should work as long as the wood is done drying and moving.

[Joe Melton]

That's a pretty wide crack, and your repair is going to be obvious regardless of how you effect it. You need to make it look artful rather than repaired. Andy did something very nice with this sort of repair a couple of months ago, as I recall. Lemonade from lemons sort of thing.
As for coffee, do you guys use the grinds that remain after the coffee is made, or do you use it from the can?
Joe

[Rich Stewart]

I had a couple pieces crack like that after I had finished them. I just put 'em up on a shelf thinking they were beyond repair. Couple days later the crack had sealed itself up tighter than a frogs butt. Could just barely see it on some and could not even find it on a cocobolo box that split open.

[John Hart]

I'm curious...Is there a specification for Frog's Butt Tightness? Or is it a general Watertight sort of thing?:)

[Bernie Weishapl]

Rich John beat me to it. How tight is frog butt tightness???:eek: :rolleyes: ;) :cool:

[Tom Sherman]

I just couldn't resist, I have never seen a frog sink from taking on too much water...must be pretty tight.

[Kaptan J.W. Meek]

I had a nasty crack open up on a Mesquite bowl I was turning, and I used CA, and sawdust to fill it.. I turned the remainder of the outside and when I turned the bowl around to hollow it out, I had to fill it again. I used clear packing tape on the outside of the bowl to reinforce the thing while I hollowed it out. Ended up not thinning out the wall as thin as I wanted.. ended up about 3/8-1/2" instead of 1/4-5/16".. BUT, it turned out to be a really nice piece. The crack is almost invisible.

[Rich Stewart]

It's tight alright.

[Richard Madison]

Bill,
You could cover one side of crack with tape, allowing it to bulge a bit over the crack. Fill from other side with epoxy. May take two or more applications, depending upon curvature. Have used black Rit Fabric Dye, dry powder, mixed with the resin, lots of dye in a little resin. Others have used various other dyes and materials mixed with the resin. It's common practice to fill worm holes in mesquite with black epoxy, sometimes enhanced with brass filings or other material.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Bill............I've used the epoxy and instant coffee crystals method successfully on several projects that had some wide cracks. In one case, a piece of South Carolina cherry the crack went around about 70 of the base of the bowl. I took instant coffee (aged about 15 years because my wife bought it and I won't drink it), crushed the crystals and mixed them with the epoxy and then added the hardner and mixed them. I put some blue painter's tape on the inside of the bowl and used some popsickle sticks to apply the epoxy from the outside. I intentionally overfilled the crack and let it cure for a couple of days. Then I finished turned it. Worked extremely well in the few cases I've used the method.

[Jeffrey Fusaro]

CA and big 'ole clamp! :eek:

this one finished up real nice. i'll be taking photos of the finished product and posting soon.

[George Tokarev]

I keep bark on the shelf for fills. Looks very natural when it's layered in cracks primed with CA. You can then use ground bark to do the small spaces between bark layers. What I like about the big chunk fills is that they minimize the unnatural look you get from heavy glue mixes. Use of the thicker CA and bark flakes allows a bit of finish penetration. Sawdust in any but slim applications gives you a dull "walleye" look. I'd avoid that at all costs.

Some like "decorative" fills with completely unnatural materials like brass or turquoise. Might try one if that's your thing. Good advice to wait out the weight loss so continued drying stress doesn't pull away from your fill.