Anyone stabilized Bocote?

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Has anyone stabilized Bocote before.I know wood is fairly oily but has anyone tried with success?
 
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My thought is it would be helpful if Bocote was constantly exsposed to water? Yes----No
 
I always seal every thing with 10-20 coats of CA. But that doesn't answer my question.
 
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If the wood floats then theres probably room for resin to penetrate. However it would need the highest vacuum you can generate and plenty of time and patience to be sure you get penetration. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it trouble.
 
Stabilizing might be done by one of those big commercial type companies that can generate thousands of pounds of pressure? I don't believe vacuum can get through a chunk of this stuff(unless it is rotten?)


Scott (is the timber rotten) B
 
if you don't mind me asking...why do you want to stabilize Bocote? It is such a dense, tight would I am curious as to why you feel the need.

I alos question if you would have decent results stabilizing given the oil content
 
SDB777 said:
Stabilizing might be done by one of those big commercial type companies that can generate thousands of pounds of pressure? I don't believe vacuum can get through a chunk of this stuff(unless it is rotten?)


Scott (is the timber rotten) B
Click to expand...

Vacuum can certainly get through this and any other wood for that matter. I have not done bocote but have customers who do it all the time. Mostly knife guys. I have, however, done ebony and achieved a 10% weight increase.

The one thing to keep in mind is that a properly stabilized blank will have just about all of the empty space in the wood filled with resin. The other thing to keep in mind is that weight gain is not a good metric for determining if something is stabilized well. It is just an indicator of how much resin you got into the material.

Remember, when stabilizing, all you are able to do is fill the empty space in the wood. Harder, denser woods have much less "empty" space than soft punky woods. As a result, the soft punky woods will have a higher weight increase than the hard dense stuff.

It all boils down to why you are stabilizing. Those of us who make pens have completely different needs than those who make knives for example. For us penmakers, we typically want to increase the hardness and density of the wood. Reducing wood movement is not high on the list of reasons to stabilize for us since we are able to easily put a good finish on our pens and our pens are not typically used in wet environments. That is also the reason it does not really make much sense for use penmakers to stabilize something that is already hard and dense.

The knifemaker, on the other hand, typically stabilizes to increase moisture resistance first and foremost with the other benefits secondary. In the knifemaker's case, it does absolutely make sense to stabilize many hard, dense woods. Remember, wood movement is caused by the piece picking up moisture and swelling, then shrinking back when it dries back out. Filling the empty space in the wood, even if there is very little, helps drastically block this moisture movement. As a result, the piece of wood will be more resistant to changes in moisture and much less likely to crack on the handle of the knife.

I have a large commercial knife maker customer on the east coast who stabilizes every piece of wood that goes through their shop including ebony and botote. I questioned the owner about it way in the beginning of my career in stabilizing and he says that once they started stabilizing everything, it made their work much better with significantly less warranty returns. Their process is strictly vacuum.

Using pressure will NOT get more resin into the wood or get resin deeper into the wood, it will just get it there quicker and reduce cycle times. Heck, quartz, turquoise, sandstone, and other stones are stabilized by lapidarists only using vacuum. As a matter of fact, cast iron is stabilized in certain industry with just vacuum!

Now Greg has a different point that could be a problem. Oily woods typically do not stabilize well, it at all. This is due only to the oil and the effects it can have on the chemistry of stabilizing resins. Most folks stay away from oily woods but again, I do know of at least 2 different customers how routinely stabilize bocote.
 
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greggas said:
if you don't mind me asking...why do you want to stabilize Bocote? It is such a dense, tight would I am curious as to why you feel the need.

I alos question if you would have decent results stabilizing given the oil content
Click to expand...

Greg

The reason I want to stabilize it is for extra protection from water as it is going to be used as a Shaving Brush Handle.
 
Thank-you Curtis for answering my Question. You say knife makers do it so I will give it a try to see if it makes any difference
 
I have had bocote stabilized in the past and enjoyed working with the product. I used a professional stabilizing service linked below. While the service may not be the cheapest compared to home stabilizing offered today, I find the quality of stabilizing to be very high.

I haven.t used them in a while, but my last order with them was for about 40 lbs of blanks. I saved a large number of blanks to get the best discount possible. And these are the guys some of the big names use to stabilize their products.

Wood Stabilizing Specialists, Int'l., LLC | Product Overview
 
BTW...

I used this company to get the deep stabilization that their process provides. The blanks I have will be used for shaving handles and other uses where water exposure can be expected. I also use some of the stabilized blanks for pens because the wood was extremely soft.

Even stabilized corn cobs there. Saves a lot of cA glue filling in the holes. :)
 
Mel Dunlap at Wood Dynamics is another commercial stabilizer. He does a lot for call turners as well as pen makers. He is in Dover, PA.
 
Though only 1/4" thick, vs a 1" pen blank, I stabilized several sets of knife scales with TurnTex Cactus Juice just a few months ago. It was for a customer, so I did not get to work the wood, but he was very happy with the results. I do not recall any issues at all....just follow the process as Curtis describes, and then some. I always pull vacuum till all bubbles are gone, release pressure a few times, repeat, then give a nice long soak without pressure....at least 4 hours, sometimes overnight. I believe this is key for dense woods such as bocote. Hope this helps!
 
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