Planing a stabilized board

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jcjc

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Probably a long shot but was wondering if anyone has ever run a stabilized board thru a thickness planer. I managed to pick up some hard-to-find plum wood that I sawed into around 6 dozen boards about about 5-6" wide by 15" or so long. Then placed them in a vat of DA for a few months. Pulled them out and stickered them till dry. The issue is over half of the boards have splitting to some degree which plum is supposedly prone to. My idea is to dry these in an oven in a jig to hold them to the same dimensions as much as possible and then stabilize them. I don't see any problems overall but I'll have to joint and plane them for what I want to do. Anybody done this or have any insight?
Thanks.
The pic is of a few of the boards, it's really beautiful wood.
 

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Got access to a thickness sander??? The kind with a rotating drum and feed belt.

I tried to use a hand plane and discovered quickly the value of the Jet thickness sander.
 
Thanks for the reply. Don't have access to a thickness sander but that sounds like a great idea.
I've got 3 of the boards clamped and in the oven right now and I'll be stabilizing them in the next day or so. I don't have a vacuum chamber big enough but I do have several gallons of cactus juice so I'm going to submerge them in that and see how that goes. They're all about an inch thick so it'll be interesting to see how the CJ penetrates as opposed to a vacuum. From there I'll run them thru the planer.
May look into building a vacuum chamber out of large diameter PVC. Have no idea if that will work though.
 
You might be able to rig a plastic bag to pull the vacuum. The viscosity of the cactus juice will limit penetration with just soaking. Try small scale test first. Or use large pvc pipe.


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that's what I'm concerned about-if stabilized woood would rapidly degrade the planer blades. I'm going to follow thru with soaking the 3 boards just to see how well that works. I just need them to be stable enough to stand up to machining because some of the most interesting boards are the most fragile.
I thought about vacuum bagging and I need to determine if that will be effective for what I'm doing plus the time and expense setting all that up.
 
There are vacuum stabilisation bags on the market (Packard Woodworking sells them).

They need different plumbing on the chamber lid from the standard one sold by Curtis.

Sounds like you are getting caught in the "if all you have is a hammer, every thing looks like a nail" perspective. Once you partially treat with cactus juice and bake it, the cactus juice plugs things and success at reprocessing plummets.
 
KenV said:
There are vacuum stabilisation bags on the market (Packard Woodworking sells them).

They need different plumbing on the chamber lid from the standard one sold by Curtis.

Sounds like you are getting caught in the "if all you have is a hammer, every thing looks like a nail" perspective. Once you partially treat with cactus juice and bake it, the cactus juice plugs things and success at reprocessing plummets.
Click to expand...

plugs the wood or vacuum bag equipment? not sure what you mean but thanks for the link-there is interesting stuff on that website.
 
i think thats what i'm gonna do. i did a little research on schedule 40 pvc and it's pricey in large diameters but it should work fine.
thanks.
 
Finally got around to experimenting with planing a stabilized board. I baked 3 boards while clamped to minimize any distortion and then let them cool while still in the clamps. In short, milling was no problem-there was no funny behavior of the wood or performance of the machines. I didn't notice much if any difference running them thru the jointer, planer (at 1/32" passes), or table saw. It stands to reason that doing this would dull the blades quicker though. My tools have spiral cutter heads with carbide inserts so dulling wouldn't be as much of an issue but it's not something I will be doing a lot of anyway but is good to know that this is a possibility for the kind of work I do.
Some before and after pics of one of the boards: I didnt plane this one down to remove every last imperfection as this was mostly an exeriment.
 

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I dont know why the stabilizing solution would have a negative reaction on your cutting tools? As long as there isnt any grit mixed in the equation, especially if everything you have is carbide tipped.
As far those two boards that have splits. Use a butterfly inlay joint across the split to keep it from splitting anymore. Complete your planing before setting the inlay.
 
i figured the cured cactus juice would be harder or more dense than the wood and therefore wear the cutters quicker. i guess that's not necessarily true and it may be that it's actually less wear on the cutting surfaces. the chips ccoming out of the machines seemed the same as unstabilized wood but there did seem to be more sawdust generated than usual.
concerning the split (thats the same board in all the pics) i was thinking the cactus juice would prevent more splitting. in any case, i'd fill the voids with clear epoxy.
 
JPW062 said:
Greatwork. Great information.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

no worries.
at this point I've run several hundred feet of stabilized wood (and i've gone thru many gallons of cactus juice in a large,home-made vacuum chamber) thru both my jointer and planer no problem.
 
I got to ask, what are you going to make with the stabilized boards? Once they are stabilized they are not going to take a stain or some finishes. It also may not take normal wood glues.
 
not sure what I'm going to make but once I bandsawed the logs into boards, I knew I had to make something. The wood not only has a great color range but also interesting grain patterns and termite holes/channels. I'm thinking I'll use epoxy and dowels or route some sort of edge profile to facilitate gluing. I'm generally not a fan of staining so that's not much of a concern.
 
probably going to make a piece of midcentury modern furniture since that's a hobby of mine but I'll also make some sort of art with it and acrylic and/or tinted epoxy resin.
 
can you give more detail on how your planer was "destroyed" from the one board?
I can't tell a difference on my planer between running a stabilized board vs non-stabilized.
thanks.
 
Which Dewalt planer was it?
IMO, the 735X is a great planer at that price, especially in a small shop with limited space on the factory stand.
Their lighter duty models, like 734, aren't anything special.
 
i see. that's why i stabilized (and still have more to go) these boards in the first place-so they'd be a consistent density for milling. there were a couple that I thought would give me problems but they went through just fine but again i'm taking light passes each time. The voids in the boards get filled with epoxy resin which also planes and joints with no issues.
 
The voids in the boards get filled with epoxy resin which also planes and joints with no issues.
Click to expand...
Maybe. I used epoxy to glue up some ironwood for turning. The combination was pretty devastating to every edge it came into contact with.
 
good info. I know all the species of wood that are collectively called "ironwood" are hell on cutting surfaces. my machines have individual carbide cutting tips as opposed to blades which means when an edge dulls, they can be loosened and rotate 90 degrees to expose a new edge. I may have to do that when i finish milling all this wood.
 
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