Interesting & Surprising Results

[micharms]

I've just started into stabilization. I had sumac, spalted lilac, spalted maple and box elder burl blanks in the pot. For interest sake I weighed each blank before and after stabilization. The before measurements were actually done before I put them in the toaster oven to dry them fully before stabilization.

I expected to find that the sumac would gain a fair bit of mass as a result but in fact it had the lowest gain of 20%. The spalted lilac was next at 36% and that was expected since most of the blanks were quite solid. The spalted maple gained 75% - again not unexpected. The BEB blanks actually in creased by 99% and 2 of the 3 were actually over 100% increase. The final weights were done after trimming so there wasn't excess resin on the outside of the blanks. I am still very surprised at the sumac since I figured the open grain would really suck up the resin.

Now I just have to do some turning:biggrin:

Michael

 

[wood-of-1kind]

Interesting bit of info in regards to 'sumac'. I have some sumac blanks that are as light as a feather. Now that you have reported this fact, I will be doing some stabilizing with
Loctite Resinol 90C and will see if the weight will be increased substantially. Have just finished some spalted maple and the blanks nearly doubled in weight.

Wonder why sumac does not 'soak' up as much of the solution?

 

[micharms]

The other interesting thing about the blanks is even though they were all in together and treated exactly the same way the sumac came out of the oven after stabilizing different from the other blanks. There was very little resin on the outside of the sumac blanks compared to all the other woods. I don't understand the differences but overall I'm liking the results.

Michael