[qbilder]

I cut this curly spalted maple from a pile of storm damage waste. All the smaller stuff was cut for firewood & hauled away. The burly, curly stumps & large stuff was left to rot. I slabbed with chainsaw, then resawed on tablesaw, resin impregnated under vacuum, and here's what I got:







They're all 1.5"sq. turning blocks for pool cues. Range from 13" up to 18". I filled my truck bed with this stuff, and by the time I resawed it into blocks, I had around 200 squares. Gonna take me a while, and a lot of juice, to resin impregnate them all.

 

[aussie milla]

That is amazing wood. I bet your pretty happy with it. The time spent on it is worth every minute.

 

[mike1950]

NICE wood..........:thumbsup::yes:

 

[MidGAOutdoor]

nice logs

 

[Dominick]

Lucky you!!!!
Nice stash.

 

[Tennessee Tim]

NICE stash!!!
Are you doing the resin impregnating yourself???? What type of limits are there??? I have a customer who's insisting on a slab in a shower. I'm not keen on epoxy for this situation. Would vacuum impregnated resin hold up and can it be done to a slab??? looking approx 5' L x 16" w x 2" thick. She has said it won't get much water but I only work from the worse case scenerio.

Loading my kiln now but was gonna wait on my splated maple until I seen this.....qbuilder, that's not nice to taunt us!!! LOL

 

[Post Oakie]

Nice work! I'm also interested in the details of resin impregnation. How come my maple never looks like that? It should make some stunning pool cues!.

 

[ibpdew]

Beautiful wood

 

[qbilder]

The resin impregnating will certainly make the wood water proof. The trick is getting large pieces done. It would take a pretty large vacuum chamber to do it, and it would have to be strongly reinforced to ensure it wouldn't implode under vacuum.

My set-up is pretty simple. It's a glass vase from hobby lobby, some pvc sewer hook-ups epoxied to the top, and a harbor freight vacuum pump. I put the turning squares in then submerge them in the resin, pull vacuum until the air has been evacuated from the wood, then release the vacuum. Once vacuum is released, atmospheric pressure forces resin into the wood, replacing any void space in the cells. Once soaked with resin, I wrap each blank in aluminum foil and bake like a holiday ham. Some woods are more receptive than others, but pretty much anything spalted & punky will soak it up well. It makes punky, rotten wood hard & stable. I get my resin from Turntex.com. It's called "cactus juice".

 

[ironman123]

Don't mean to sound cruel, but...that is a suiside chamber. A friend of mine (Justturnin on Wood Barter forum) went to Hobby Lobby and bought a glass vase and hooked it up as a vacum chamber and it imploded. I have a 4" diameter chamber made from clear PVC. That would be much safer.

Glass Chamber ** CAUTION**
Justturnin (09-29-2013)

You have some very nice maple.

Ray

 

[Post Oakie]

qbuilder, thanks for the photo. Good to have another tool in the toolbox! I've never heard of cactus juice. The vacuum chamber should work for PEG, as well. I'm guessing that Hobby Lobby doesn't have real good quality control over the glass vases, since most customers don't use them for vacuum chambers. Some may work, and others not. Does the cylinder need to be clear?

 

[qbilder]

Yeah I have been warned about it many, many times. I'm not particularly worried. I did hear a good idea that I will use. Wrap the chamber with packing tape. It gives the shatterless window effect. But seriously, at 1/2" thick, I am not too worried about it. It has held complete vacuum hundreds of times already, so I would assume it's made it past the testing phase.

The chamber doesn't need to be clear. I chose to have it clear because I like to monitor the bubbles. When you first begin vacuum, there's so much air coming from the wood that it looks like it's boiling. It creates a big foamy expansion that grows upward like a volcano. I don't want to suck any of that stuff into the pump, so I watch it and release some of the vacuum as it is getting close to the top. The trick is to keep vacuum as high as possible without sucking juice into the pump. Eventually the air is completely escaped from the wood and no more bubbles.