Olivewood burl stabilization help

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Andyww

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Alabama
Bought a lot of olivewood and 4 or 5 pieces are from a burl. They have huge cracks that go very deep into the blanks. They have incredible figure but I dont know what to do with them. How should I handle them? I hope that ive include the picture correctly
 

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Wood

Andyww said:
Bought a lot of olivewood and 4 or 5 pieces are from a burl. They have huge cracks that go very deep into the blanks. They have incredible figure but I dont know what to do with them. How should I handle them? I hope that ive include the picture correctly
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Wood needs to be stress relieved or stablizied.....so the crack doesn't get larger .

You can crush up turquoise mix it with epoxy and fill the cracks .
You can cut a groove or channel and inlay a piece of wood or some other material .

You can mix up some cocktail of saw dust or stone or what ever material you like with west systems epoxy .
Even different little piece of wood .


Really depends on the machinery you have or how much time and money your willing to spend.

Projects and materials like this and some thinking out of the box is what makes the coolest looking pens .
 
Im willing to try. It is absolutely beautiful. I guess if you have any links for epoxys or how to acquire crushed stone. Some googleing will do the trick on the methods I suppose
 
I use thin epoxy that cures in 24 hours and is darker brown. I add black epoxy colorant to the epoxy and do it in a plastic bag. The thin epoxy will leak around or through masking tape. Black looks good on olive.

If you want to add embelishments search on Turtle Feathers. They sell inlace chips and resins for a good price. Inlace turns easily.
 
Yuk

Andyww said:
Im willing to try. It is absolutely beautiful. I guess if you have any links for epoxys or how to acquire crushed stone. Some googleing will do the trick on the methods I suppose
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I don't know if I even like suggesting this stuff .
I much rather crush my own turquoise and mix with west systems epoxy thin slow drying epoxy.

I don't like the epoxy they use ( its too thick ) and it should be used as a filler around some bigger piece of turquoise IMO .
It ground to small go to the hobby shop and buy some small piece of turquoise to us with the crushed turquoise inlace kit
Kits - InLace Inlay Material
 
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Curly said:
Send a private message to George (robutacion). If anyone knows how to stabilize and fill your blank, it's him.
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Thanks Pete for your endorsement, cheers..!:wink:

The very first question that I would need to help is, how dry is it..?

If you have a moisture meter gauge, please test its MC% and don't forget to tell us what is the reading scale of the moisture meter you used, is it 0-40, 0-60, 0-80, 0-100..??? all gauges have a different reading scales, 20% in a gauge that reads 40% as its maximum is very different than 20% from a gauge that reads 100%, capish..?:)

Now, stabilising won't fill any holes, cracks and the wood has to be moisture and oils free, with Olive wood, "roasting" the wood to crystallise its natural oils is essential...!

The is a rule about Olive wood bigger chunks that goes like this, if has no cracks, ain't Olive wood...!:biggrin:

Cheers
George
 
Man... that's some intense sounding stuff. I yave no clue about gauging moisture. All I can say on that note is (and this may mean nothing) when I first looked at all the olive blanks, I said to myself "this stuff is super dry." I know that sounds like a joke but it's true. What should be my best route. Im leaning heavily towards putting it in a ziplock with some epoxy and vacuuming it and letting it cure for a week. Thoughts?
 
Thats not a bad idea. If i drill it, then cut it down as far as i feel comfortable, the soak in ca with the hole, it should fill the cracks well because the are shorter. I wouldnt have to turn the long and could start sanding sooner which would be safer
 
CA it before you drill it though. It will crack on you. As you turn it down you can always keep adding CA to stabilize it.
 
Well, you never mentioned the size of the blanks you have nor what you intended to do with them, the pic seem to show a spindle type blank and I wouldn't assume that the wood you got is all for pen blanks because on IAP, you will find members that do all sorts of wood turnings with all wood sized blanks.

It would be great also if you could take a close up of an area of the blanks cracks, I ask this because in the pic you posted the image is too small to see the detail on it, it looks quite OK from here.:)

I'm certainly surprised with your "observation" of the wood, particularly Olive wood that is always heavy and feels moist to the touch due to its natural oils but, there has to be a reason you thought that way, no doubt.

As for moisture meter gauges, they are a great help when we get wood, inexpensive to buy and easy to use LCD 0-99.9% 2Pins Wood Industry Digital Moisture Meter Humidity Tester Timber IB | eBay

Cheers
George
 
I've used brass filings to fill larger voids and then drop some thin CA over the top of the void. Looks pretty good when finished.
 
Hey robutacion, they blanks are .889x.889x5". They are super light and airy. I guess that is why I thought of them as dry. Also, this is the second lot that I have bought from this person and they are of the same cut from the same time. I have turned several from the previous lot and I can say that there is no substantial amount of oil in these. When I turn something like cocobolo, I have to clean it alot with denatured alcohol before I put the finish on because it seems like the oil just wont stop. But with these, there's practically none whatsoever. Seems dry as a bone. They have been my favorite to work with and turn really well. Im curious what you think about all that. Oh and when I sand them with the grain, I have to take care because they easily burn and become discolored.
 
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