Wood hardener - what is is?

[Jim K..]

Styrene monomer

[Jim K..]

Giyf?

[Richard Tobin]

How does wood hardener work? Is it essentially dilute glue?

-- Richard

[Richard Tobin]

Thanks, and how does it harden wood?

-- Richard

[Harry Bloomfield]

Richard Tobin expressed precisely :

My guess - Its a plastic, heavily diluted by a solvent. The solvent evaporates when exposed to air, leaving the styrene behind in the pores of the wood, making the rotted wood firm again.

[Brian Gaff]

Well there are several types, but essentially they are designed to penetrate the soggy places and holes and glue the left overs together without expansion.

Bit of a bodge. Brian

[alan_m]

A bodge that can work quite well if the the hole is then filled with car body filler.

[Martin Brown]

It has a low surface tension and wets out dry porous wood before polymerising into hard polystyrene plastic when exposed to the air. It works reasonably well provided that the remaining wood is more or less approximately sound. It cannot work miracles on powdery dust though.