I see a lot of posts on FB where people think they need to stabilize everything. It all depends on how hard the wood is. If it's hard enough to turn, I would just cast it. Stabilizing harder woods is a long process to get the penetration and a lot of times the juice will harden in the voids you want to cast. Start small, do a couple pieces and see how it works for you. Turning two different surfaces with different hardness on one blank can often require a lighter touch so not to make the blank "out of round". Make sure you oven dry the wood to get all of the moisture out before you cast or stabilize. Resin adheres to warm surfaces and rolls away from cold. Also, if you don't stabilize you might want to get some "ultra thin" CA like Gluboost (the new teal label), and put a couple coats on the blank after it's turned. It will soak in and saturate the wood fiber, stabilizing it before the finish. I would probably do the drilled hole also, before epoxying the tube in. Best of luck!
