Casey Burns wrote:Am going to try the Acrylic Impregnation method myself. I just sent off a pair of Curly European Maple flute sets to a service that does this, wood rounded and pilot bored. I am eager to see what this does in terms of adding mass to this wood. The maple is highly figured and these should make for a pretty pair of instruments. Am hoping that the other qualities such as reaming etc. remain similar to working wood rather than Delrin. The descriptions here of Delrin suddenly seizing the tools was enough for me to remember how it does that and stay away from it. This will be an interesting experiment!
Casey
You'll get mass alright! Also, commercial wood stabilizing is likely to actually achieve a higher percentage of impregnation, at least based on what I've read. It depends upon their set up, but some of them combine vacuum infusion alternating with pressure and claim this gets more resin in. I'm a trifle skeptical about the pressure aspect because I've done it. I have a vacuum chamber and a pretty big pressure chamber and I did a two part process (in theory similar to that of the commercial stabilizing outfits). My experience was that any extra absorption as a result of pressure was tiny and not worth the huge trouble and mess that was involved. It seemed that woods that are going to drink up the resin will do so under vacuum. One of the tests happens when you move the wood from the vacuum resin bath to the pressure tank. My pieces of maple were already so saturated that they sank! Some other pieces of cherry and walnut bobbed up like corks and had to be held down with weights. After the pressure treatment, the maple was still submerged, but when I took the weights off the other woods they still bobbed up like corks. So that decided me. However, I won't presume that my set up was the same as a commercial one. I was using about 65 psi for about 12 hours. They might use more pressure and longer times.
I think that the resin infused woods ream better. Meaning better than regular wood. And the resin also makes the wood behave like a more oily wood when it comes to cutting it. Cuts smoother, less prone to tear out, etc.
Wear dust protection!!! I'm sure you already do, but if wood dust is bad I'm guessing wood dust saturated with cured resin is worse
