penetrol

It's not suitable for stabilizing materials for knife handles.....it's very similar to Minwax Wood Hardener......for INTERIOR use. Get it damp, wet, bloody, or just about any type of fluid on it, and it turns a milky white color....and not just on the surface. I've tried both it, as well as the Minwax Wood Hardener for stabilizing, along with many other products.....after two years of wasting money on products, and wood on trying them, it's much cheaper and FAR less trouble to have my woods/materials stabilized by the professionals.
 
Ed touched on a good point. Another is the cost of building your own stabilizing equiptment. Even the machines ment to put a vacuum on food container are not cheap. Then theres the vacuum vessel itself. Unless all you want to do is draw a hardening oil into the wood you will need something other than the food containers for this job. The solvents in things like Minwax Wood Hardener will attack the plastic. I know from sad experience There is a danger with glass jars that they might implode if too much of a vacuum is created in them. That leaves you with fabricating some sort of a metal tank. By the time you get everything together you will have spent enough to pay to have a lot of wood stabilized and that's without the cost of the stabilizing agent.

I've also tried Nelsonite. It is supposed to be able to penitrate all through the wood by just soaking. From experience, I am satified that it will do that but I'm at a loss to see what else it does. It will not harden soft wood as well as boiled linseed oil so using it with something like cedar, cottonwood, or spalted wood is out. I've also had scales warp badly after being cut from a treated piece of wood. Unless you want to open a business stabiizing wood it is just not financially feasable to do your own stabilizing.

Doug
 
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