Most sensible advice ... David Marks had a portion of a show dedicated to fixing/stabilizing knots that pretty well summed up the above, including using pigments to make the stabilization look like mother nature intended.
Really? I didn't know that; I promise I didn't steal the idea from him. :-) I just kinda migrated towards it; I hate throwing away good wood simply because of a little defect here and there.
------------------------------------- Same trick,using black epoxy to fill voids, as the people who work with mesquite.
A little tip, you can thin the mixed black epoxy with denatured alcohol (About 5% max) to get better penetration without weakening the bond.
Lew
. :-) I just kinda
ittle defect here
I have always loved working with wood precisely because of the "defects", it is the varied grain, knots, wounds healed over and how the stresses of living have given the wood it's character. Much like people, how they have incorporated that adversity into their life is what gives them their true character.
Can't find that kind of unknown and surprising quality so much in metals or ceramic's etc. Some but not so much.
I think whether or not you can do that must depend on what brand of epoxy you're using. I've tried that with Bondo brand marine epoxy (which I really like) and wound up with a rubbery result that would never cure hard. I may have used more than 5% though; not sure. I've never tried it with System Three, which is the other brand I use most often, but it's already sufficiently thin that I haven't felt the need to cut it any thinner.
And I too have done the black epoxy on mesquite thing; I do live in Texas after all. :-)
------------------------------ My choices of "Good Epoxy" never included Bondo so can't comment.
System 3 has good stuff, have used thousands of gallons of it.
The alcohol add can be tricky, a little goes a long way.
------------------------------
--------------------------- Strictly for special applications.
----------------------
--------------------------- Black epoxy works well with several woods, not jut mesquite.
Lew
--------------------------- If your alcohol had any water in it all bets off.
Rubbing alcohol won't cut (Too much water).
Lew
Or hit it with a heat gun. The heat makes epoxy very runny and it soaks right in.
-Steve
Yeah, with a name like "Bondo" one might conjure up the idea that it's low-quality automotive body putty crap, but it's really quite good compared to most locally available junk called "epoxy". This is the stuff I'm talking about:
Since you've already tested alcohol with System Three I might try it sometime if the need arises. I'm not sure it would work with their T-88 product though; that stuff is a bit of a different animal.
Yep. You see it a LOT with Mesquite though because it's so hard to find any decent quantity of wood that isn't full of checks and voids.
Decent epoxy, filled with phenolic microballoons to the consistency of peanut butter. For paler wood, silica microballoons with a dye. You can apply this with a popsicle stick, you don't need a mould. Microballoon filler is useful because it's easy to sand afterwards.
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