Thank you for the video, your friendly attitude made this video very enjoyable! I have been trying to find an affordable way of hardening the wood for my knife handles and this seems to be something worth looking into
Thanks for this. So much simpler than other methods I've seen. Question, though. Do you think, if you left the wood to soak longer, it would absorb as much as the one which had been in the vacuum container?
I think the vacuum container will always give slightly better results. I don't think it'll be a lot better, but definitely some. Soaking seems to reach a sort of equilibrium point and then absorbtion stops. The vacuum pump gets you a little extra.
Hi Shawn, I need to add some pressure treated 2x8 boards to surround a 6x6 post holding up an outdoor deck. The bottom of the 6x6 posts are quite rotted from water damage. What are your thoughts on whether I should soak the end grain of the support 2x8 lumber? Would it add any durability and life to the lumber ? David
I had the same issue with HF vacuum pump. They hardly pumped (second one almost did) and dont hold. you can use a small jar inline on the line to keep overflow out of the pump
Minwax Wood Hardener is the only product like this that I have ever seen. I suppose there must be equivalent products from other companies, but they're not available in my area.
No idea. I didn't test it for hardness. My goal in this project was to make knife handles that were dimensionally stable over seasonal humidity changes. This product and this method do seem to work for that sort of stability. But I'll test the other parameters eventually. I plan to conduct further experiments with Minwax Wood Hardener as time allows.
How would you rate this process against traditional stabilization methods? Do you believe this is sufficient of a stabilization process for knife handles? I also wonder if you could add dye to the wood hardened like you would cactus juice to add color to the wood.
I've made knife handles with my own Minwax stabilization and with cactus juice stabilized wood that someone else had done in a serious vacuum chamber and the cactus juice is definitely better in most cases. The Minwax wood hardener *does* work, in that it helps to fill the air gaps in the wood, but a good heat-cured cactus juice is much harder and tougher. As far as I know you can indeed add dye to Minwax wood hardener. I have used Fiebing's alcohol based medium brown leather dye in Minwax wood hardener to help define the grain in wood. I'd say that worked well overall, but it is difficult to judge the final color of the wood as it comes out very dark at first, then gradually lightens over the next week or so as the wood hardener slowly dries.
I'm in the process of making a wood plate that'll have about 300lb against from a 6x6 post i cut off 1 inch into, for additional strength purposes would this work on the 1 inch piece
It might help a little. It depends on your wood type. The hardener itself isn't all that strong, and depending on the density of your wood it could be difficult to pull the hardener deep enough into the wood to do you much good. It penetrated well into my spalted maple, but spalted wood is pretty spongy to start with. Some of my later experiments (not filmed) showed that the hardener penetrates poorly into dense-grained hardwoods. If you've got a full 1-inch thick piece of good dense hardwood, it should be plenty strong enough for your post without any extra help. Adding the wood hardener probably wouldn't add much physical strength, but it could improve your wood's resistance to moisture and protect against weather checking if your piece is going to be outdoors.
Shawn, thanks for taking the time to make a video that answered all my questions. I’m 70 years old and I don’t make more than a dozen knives a year. My problem with Cactus Juice is...it goes bad after a time, while Minwax Wood Hardener does not. The price for Cactus Juice is also sky high and I would never get my money’s worth from a 1/2 gallon of it because of its shelf life. I’m making knife scales using Cholla Cactus. This material is very brittle and once it is vacuum treated with Minwax Wood Hardener it turns rock hard...I mean super hard. I knew the Minwax Wood Hardener was doing a good job and your video proves it!!!
Thank you so much!! I’ve been watching stabilizer videos all morning and yours is by far the most helpful! I’m wanting to make wood coasters but did not want to have to invest in a vacuum system.
The vacuum system is a lot better. I’d like it if he tried cactus juice resin in a vacuum chamber. Then drop all 3 pieces in water for 72 hours and see if they absorb any water.
The step that most videos I have seen is missing is that the wood SHOULD BE put into an oven a 200 F for a few hours to get “most” of the moisture out, BEFORE putting in vacuum & Min wax
Very enlightening. I have a pump chamber and Cactus Juice, but being a weekend warrior, I rarely use it... and now my CJ has likely gone bad. Great to see there is another option that does 'good enough' for my purposes.
I understand seasonal changes and the problems it can cause on unfinished woods, especially porous woods and burls that are always better stabilized, but freaking maple? Maple can be finished in just about anything, and it's dense enough to get away without even sanding sealer, so what's the point? Just freaking use a normal polyurethane, acrylic or epoxy finish, even polymerized oil finishes like tongue or gun stock oil should work. I build guitars, and still have the first one I ever made in the 80's. It has a swamp ash body finished in oil and is stable as a rock, but still light weight for not being 20% plastic. I am not too far away from you and have icy winters and blazing hot summer's and really little spring or fall to speak of, and have never had problems with most woods and the climate, and it's not like you are making outdoor furniture or something. As a guitar builder/repair man, the climate is a big issue with acoustics and unfinished fingerboards on any instrument, but on the latter a few coats of teak oil keeps them stable for years, and prevents shrinkage from drying or swelling from moisture. Been using it for decades, because most products made specifically for it are not about doing it once every few years, but making sure you use it often so you can buy more. IOW: they are selling snake oil, not great results.
I’d love to see a video comparing these weight to cactus juice or comparable done in a vacuum chamber, and then soak all 3 in water for 72 hours to see it their weights change from absorbing water.
This was more of a test of penetration with or without vacuum. I was expecting a test of the hardness of the wood (I.e. load bearing) after treating the wood normally with a brush. That would have been a lot more useful/practical of a test IMO. Good presentation though.
I don't think this product would do much to improve the load bearing strength of the wood. It's not very hard or strong once cured. Calling it "Wood Hardener" is probably wishful thinking invented by the marketing department. They should have called it "Minwax Wood Stabilizer" instead.
@@ShawnsWorkshop - Wood hardening should improve its load bearing capacity however. There are products out there that also claim to improve structural integrity. But the main point I was making is that this vacuum test could have been done with a sealant or other wood penetrating agent. I was expecting a test of the hardening :)
The 7 gr. they gave a percentage of filling of 21% and 30% is not at all inconsiderable given that the woods are soaked throughout. I also liked that the wood retained a large percentage of its natural beauty. I don't think the word stabilization is the right one when you use juice and vacuum, closer to the whole job is the word mutation. Being a wood lover I would never put stabilized "wood" on my knives. I prefer woods that are stable by nature, such as cocobolo or ironwood.
Does anyone know if you can stabilize pen blanks then add epoxy to make a hybrid blank? I have tried epoxy finish over Minwax wood hardner on bowls and it sometimes was not comparable.
I think that would work as long as you waited long enough for all of the solvent to evaporate out of the wood. This could take several days or longer depending on the temperature and humidity of your workspace. You might also try a different brand of wood hardener. I've had fairly poor results with Minwax Wood Hardener overall. Its just not as good as they say it is. You can see that here: ua-cam.com/video/VHosqGYeSDA/v-deo.html and here: ua-cam.com/video/LkLwatitQwQ/v-deo.html Other brands of wood hardener commonly found are Varathane Wood Hardener, Ronseal Wet Rot Wood Hardner, and PC Petrifier. I haven't tried any of these yet, but they might be worth a look.
Hi Shawn, I’m making big bass marimba bars (percussion instrument that will be struck thousands of times with a medium hard mallet and will vibrate like crazy over and over and over). Traditionally they finished with oils and waxs, though I want to experiment with other stuff. For my experiment phase-in order of best to worst-can you please suggest/brainstorm what you think might work out for coating/sealing wooden bars that will be taking a lot of inherent abuse? With all the beating and vibrating, for instance, might shellac or lacquer or polyurethane or wood hardener or an acrylic poor be too brittle, resulting in getting rattled and crushed to death and breaking apart microscopically over time? Also consider which finish would be the most scratch resistant. (Bars will be stored in stacks and slid against each other with the potential of dirt and sand bits in between. Thanks for brainstorming with me 👍🏻
That's an interesting question. What kind of wood are we talking about here? Wikipedia says marimba bars are made of super hard exotic rosewoods or similar material. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimba This suggests a very dense, tight-grained wood. On wood such as this, many finishes will have a difficult time soaking in. The nice thing is that woods such as those don't really need any additional hardener. They're already super hard to start with. Probably a traditional oil finish is really all that's needed and that's really just there to keep the wood from drying out and cracking. The wood should already be very strong and probably doesn't need much to keep it strong. However, if you wanted to experiment with super-hard finishes anyway, I'd skip polyurethane and acrylic and move straight to two-part epoxies or other more exotic industrial adhesives. West Systems G-Flex toughened Marine Epoxy might be a good one to start with. www.westsystem.com/products/compare-epoxy-physical-properties/ I use G-Flex on knife handles and it features a good blend of both physical toughness, but also retains a little flex which gives it better impact resistance. But again, with a super-dense wood, all of these things are just going to sit on the surface and will be at risk of flaking off under repeated impacts. Beyond West Systems G-Flex, if you needed something even stronger, there are a whole series of aerospace grade epoxies, but most of them aren't transparent, and would make for a pretty nasty looking wood finish. That being said, If I wanted stronger and more durable marimba bars I'd maybe look at machining them out of something that wasn't wood. Like G-10 laminate, paper micarta, or DymaLux resin-laminated wood. any of those products would be virtually indestructable for life and should require no finish or maintenance of any kind once cut and polished to shape.
I built this one myself out of parts. I used a 32 ounce Ball brand food canning jar for the chamber. But any large glass jar with a tight-fitting lid would probably work. The vacuum pump is from a car brake bleeder kit that you can buy on Amazon or from most automotive parts suppliers.
Yes I think you could. I've never tried it for knife handles, but I think you could put something like a Fiebing's alcohol based leather dye in there. Or maybe a RIT liquid fabric dye.
Great video. Very informative. However, I'm kind of working on a special project and was wondering how well it penetrates if just brushed on. I'm hand carving a root system I found into a sculpture and the only way I can apply the gardener is with a brush. Will it keep it from splitting and will the hardener penetrate deeper if I leave it sit for an extended period of time (weeks or months). Or will it start to split again once I carve away so much. No worries if you don't know. Just figured I'd give it a shot considering how well you did this video. Thought you might have some insight. Thanks.
My experiments with brushing it on have not gone very well. But it would depend on how porous your wood is. Soft woods with open grain should take the hardener in a little better, but I've found that it doesn't penetrate tight-grained, dense woods very well at all. I've never tried it on root woods of any kind though. If you have any scrap pieces it would be worth experimenting with the hardener on a piece of scrap first to see how it goes.
@@ShawnsWorkshop I used it on a redwood tree root that I wanted to stabilize/strengthen to make it into a coffee mug hanging tree. Think about what the purpose is of the wood structure within a root... to transport water up into the tree. It sucked up the hardener like a sponge as I brushed it on, it took way more hardener than I expected to fully saturate the root.
I haven't tried that. But my best guess is that the stabilized wood will not accept stain very well. I may have to experiment with it in a future video.
Nobody's soaking small cuts of wood, their most likely painting it onto joists, studs, windows, doors, etc. I was curious to see how well it fixed cracks or rotted wood, and if paint brushing it on fully absorbs into the particles & binds them together or not.
Soaking small cuts of wood for handles is quite common among knife makers. Minwax wood hardener has many uses. Edit: Lathe woodturners making pens, chess pieces, spice grinders, tool handles, and other small objects also commonly stabilize small pieces of wood in much the same way as I'm doing here.
The wood hardener does cause the wood fibers to swell a little bit when it is still wet. It would be stable when it was all dry though. It is possible your wood had a micro-split in it and the slight swelling drove it open. Other than that I'm not sure. Was it a very straight-grained piece of wood? Small pieces of wood (as for knife scales) plus straight grain always runs some risk of splitting.
Batman sound effects made me laugh. Nice.
Thank you for the video, your friendly attitude made this video very enjoyable! I have been trying to find an affordable way of hardening the wood for my knife handles and this seems to be something worth looking into
I've used Minwax wood hardener for years on my pistol grips.
Brand new to wood working and loved this video!
Once the hardener is used once, can the remaining liquid be poured back into the container and reused?
Works on bone also. One thing it didn't work on was a lipoma I had removed.
Thanks for this. So much simpler than other methods I've seen. Question, though. Do you think, if you left the wood to soak longer, it would absorb as much as the one which had been in the vacuum container?
I think the vacuum container will always give slightly better results. I don't think it'll be a lot better, but definitely some.
Soaking seems to reach a sort of equilibrium point and then absorbtion stops. The vacuum pump gets you a little extra.
Hi Shawn, I need to add some pressure treated 2x8 boards to surround a 6x6 post holding up an outdoor deck. The bottom of the 6x6 posts are quite rotted from water damage. What are your thoughts on whether I should soak the end grain of the support 2x8 lumber? Would it add any durability and life to the lumber ?
David
I had the same issue with HF vacuum pump. They hardly pumped (second one almost did) and dont hold.
you can use a small jar inline on the line to keep overflow out of the pump
Hi mate amazing video, dose it have to be minwax getting this stuff is not easy lol
Minwax Wood Hardener is the only product like this that I have ever seen. I suppose there must be equivalent products from other companies, but they're not available in my area.
@@ShawnsWorkshop just got wet rot wood hardener from ronseal in the uk fingers crossed 😆
Did it actually harden the wood or did it just soak in well? These results could be replicated with oil if weight is the only metric being used.
No idea. I didn't test it for hardness.
My goal in this project was to make knife handles that were dimensionally stable over seasonal humidity changes. This product and this method do seem to work for that sort of stability. But I'll test the other parameters eventually. I plan to conduct further experiments with Minwax Wood Hardener as time allows.
How would you rate this process against traditional stabilization methods? Do you believe this is sufficient of a stabilization process for knife handles? I also wonder if you could add dye to the wood hardened like you would cactus juice to add color to the wood.
I've made knife handles with my own Minwax stabilization and with cactus juice stabilized wood that someone else had done in a serious vacuum chamber and the cactus juice is definitely better in most cases. The Minwax wood hardener *does* work, in that it helps to fill the air gaps in the wood, but a good heat-cured cactus juice is much harder and tougher.
As far as I know you can indeed add dye to Minwax wood hardener. I have used Fiebing's alcohol based medium brown leather dye in Minwax wood hardener to help define the grain in wood. I'd say that worked well overall, but it is difficult to judge the final color of the wood as it comes out very dark at first, then gradually lightens over the next week or so as the wood hardener slowly dries.
I'm in the process of making a wood plate that'll have about 300lb against from a 6x6 post i cut off 1 inch into, for additional strength purposes would this work on the 1 inch piece
It might help a little. It depends on your wood type. The hardener itself isn't all that strong, and depending on the density of your wood it could be difficult to pull the hardener deep enough into the wood to do you much good.
It penetrated well into my spalted maple, but spalted wood is pretty spongy to start with. Some of my later experiments (not filmed) showed that the hardener penetrates poorly into dense-grained hardwoods.
If you've got a full 1-inch thick piece of good dense hardwood, it should be plenty strong enough for your post without any extra help. Adding the wood hardener probably wouldn't add much physical strength, but it could improve your wood's resistance to moisture and protect against weather checking if your piece is going to be outdoors.
Fantastic news for a noob.
Acetone - at 20C one won't be able to go below 200mm Hg - the vapor pressure of acetone at that temperature - that's almost 1/3 of an atm.
Shawn, thanks for taking the time to make a video that answered all my questions. I’m 70 years old and I don’t make more than a dozen knives a year. My problem with Cactus Juice is...it goes bad after a time, while Minwax Wood Hardener does not. The price for Cactus Juice is also sky high and I would never get my money’s worth from a 1/2 gallon of it because of its shelf life. I’m making knife scales using Cholla Cactus. This material is very brittle and once it is vacuum treated with Minwax Wood Hardener it turns rock hard...I mean super hard. I knew the Minwax Wood Hardener was doing a good job and your video proves it!!!
Thank you so much!! I’ve been watching stabilizer videos all morning and yours is by far the most helpful! I’m wanting to make wood coasters but did not want to have to invest in a vacuum system.
The vacuum system is a lot better. I’d like it if he tried cactus juice resin in a vacuum chamber. Then drop all 3 pieces in water for 72 hours and see if they absorb any water.
9:29 did you do a test with applying as per minwax instructions? Then test weight & cut end visual test?
The step that most videos I have seen is missing is that the wood SHOULD BE put into an oven a 200 F for a few hours to get “most” of the moisture out, BEFORE putting in vacuum & Min wax
Very enlightening. I have a pump chamber and Cactus Juice, but being a weekend warrior, I rarely use it... and now my CJ has likely gone bad. Great to see there is another option that does 'good enough' for my purposes.
I understand seasonal changes and the problems it can cause on unfinished woods, especially porous woods and burls that are always better stabilized, but freaking maple? Maple can be finished in just about anything, and it's dense enough to get away without even sanding sealer, so what's the point? Just freaking use a normal polyurethane, acrylic or epoxy finish, even polymerized oil finishes like tongue or gun stock oil should work. I build guitars, and still have the first one I ever made in the 80's. It has a swamp ash body finished in oil and is stable as a rock, but still light weight for not being 20% plastic.
I am not too far away from you and have icy winters and blazing hot summer's and really little spring or fall to speak of, and have never had problems with most woods and the climate, and it's not like you are making outdoor furniture or something. As a guitar builder/repair man, the climate is a big issue with acoustics and unfinished fingerboards on any instrument, but on the latter a few coats of teak oil keeps them stable for years, and prevents shrinkage from drying or swelling from moisture. Been using it for decades, because most products made specifically for it are not about doing it once every few years, but making sure you use it often so you can buy more. IOW: they are selling snake oil, not great results.
I’d love to see a video comparing these weight to cactus juice or comparable done in a vacuum chamber, and then soak all 3 in water for 72 hours to see it their weights change from absorbing water.
This was more of a test of penetration with or without vacuum. I was expecting a test of the hardness of the wood (I.e. load bearing) after treating the wood normally with a brush. That would have been a lot more useful/practical of a test IMO. Good presentation though.
I don't think this product would do much to improve the load bearing strength of the wood. It's not very hard or strong once cured.
Calling it "Wood Hardener" is probably wishful thinking invented by the marketing department.
They should have called it "Minwax Wood Stabilizer" instead.
@@ShawnsWorkshop - Wood hardening should improve its load bearing capacity however. There are products out there that also claim to improve structural integrity. But the main point I was making is that this vacuum test could have been done with a sealant or other wood penetrating agent. I was expecting a test of the hardening :)
5g vs 7g in a material weighing only 23 hands is a high percentage higher, though..
18% resin versus 23.33 (repeating, of course) percentage of resin.
In a 100g piece, that would in theory be 20g vs 30g. 10g difference...
The 7 gr. they gave a percentage of filling of 21% and 30% is not at all inconsiderable given that the woods are soaked throughout. I also liked that the wood retained a large percentage of its natural beauty. I don't think the word stabilization is the right one when you use juice and vacuum, closer to the whole job is the word mutation. Being a wood lover I would never put stabilized "wood" on my knives. I prefer woods that are stable by nature, such as cocobolo or ironwood.
Always wear PPE or Gloves that won't dissolve in acetone so oyu don't get the resin on your skin
Great video ,just starting in the hobby and always looking for tips!
Try to make any type of White Stabilized Wood ^^
Very cool, thanks for sharing.
Very useful. Can you try a few different types of wood? The result for denser wood will be interesting.
Informative video, great help. Have you tried this method on hardwood eg ironwood or cocobolo?
I use mineral spirits and beeswax. It's a lot cheaper.
This is so cool. 🙌 excellent video, my friend. You deserve way more views and likes for the quality and effort put into this.
that was a cool project that is nice looking wood you were working with
1.5 speed
I tried this, actually made a video. Although it can work, I bought one of those pump set ups.
Does anyone know if you can stabilize pen blanks then add epoxy to make a hybrid blank? I have tried epoxy finish over Minwax wood hardner on bowls and it sometimes was not comparable.
I think that would work as long as you waited long enough for all of the solvent to evaporate out of the wood. This could take several days or longer depending on the temperature and humidity of your workspace.
You might also try a different brand of wood hardener. I've had fairly poor results with Minwax Wood Hardener overall. Its just not as good as they say it is.
You can see that here: ua-cam.com/video/VHosqGYeSDA/v-deo.html
and here: ua-cam.com/video/LkLwatitQwQ/v-deo.html
Other brands of wood hardener commonly found are Varathane Wood Hardener, Ronseal Wet Rot Wood Hardner, and PC Petrifier.
I haven't tried any of these yet, but they might be worth a look.
Thanks have a good day
Great demonstration Shawn. I'll be sure and give this a try in the days to come.
Can the wood hardener be reused? Great video
Yes it can be reused. But it must be kept in a tightly sealed container because the solvent evaporates very quickly.
Excellent details. Thank you!
Hi Shawn,
I’m making big bass marimba bars (percussion instrument that will be struck thousands of times with a medium hard mallet and will vibrate like crazy over and over and over). Traditionally they finished with oils and waxs, though I want to experiment with other stuff. For my experiment phase-in order of best to worst-can you please suggest/brainstorm what you think might work out for coating/sealing wooden bars that will be taking a lot of inherent abuse? With all the beating and vibrating, for instance, might shellac or lacquer or polyurethane or wood hardener or an acrylic poor be too brittle, resulting in getting rattled and crushed to death and breaking apart microscopically over time? Also consider which finish would be the most scratch resistant. (Bars will be stored in stacks and slid against each other with the potential of dirt and sand bits in between. Thanks for brainstorming with me 👍🏻
That's an interesting question. What kind of wood are we talking about here? Wikipedia says marimba bars are made of super hard exotic rosewoods or similar material. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimba
This suggests a very dense, tight-grained wood. On wood such as this, many finishes will have a difficult time soaking in. The nice thing is that woods such as those don't really need any additional hardener. They're already super hard to start with.
Probably a traditional oil finish is really all that's needed and that's really just there to keep the wood from drying out and cracking. The wood should already be very strong and probably doesn't need much to keep it strong.
However, if you wanted to experiment with super-hard finishes anyway, I'd skip polyurethane and acrylic and move straight to two-part epoxies or other more exotic industrial adhesives.
West Systems G-Flex toughened Marine Epoxy might be a good one to start with. www.westsystem.com/products/compare-epoxy-physical-properties/
I use G-Flex on knife handles and it features a good blend of both physical toughness, but also retains a little flex which gives it better impact resistance. But again, with a super-dense wood, all of these things are just going to sit on the surface and will be at risk of flaking off under repeated impacts.
Beyond West Systems G-Flex, if you needed something even stronger, there are a whole series of aerospace grade epoxies, but most of them aren't transparent, and would make for a pretty nasty looking wood finish.
That being said, If I wanted stronger and more durable marimba bars I'd maybe look at machining them out of something that wasn't wood. Like G-10 laminate, paper micarta, or DymaLux resin-laminated wood. any of those products would be virtually indestructable for life and should require no finish or maintenance of any kind once cut and polished to shape.
@@ShawnsWorkshop Cool. Thanks Shawn!
Can this be used on a framing stud under drywall? I have a tiny section of rot from a water leak…
Yes it can. It is made to reinforce rotting and decayed wood.
@@ShawnsWorkshop thanks! I will definitely give this a try. Much cheaper alternative than having the stud replaced!
Would a material hardness gauge be able to measure how much more hard the wood is post hardner bath?
It should yes. I'm not sure what kind of tester would be appropriate for wood though.
so uhh, how do i vacuum chamber my hardwood floor and back yard deck?
If you're going to follow my method. Step 1: Acquire a ridiculously large Mason jar...
@@ShawnsWorkshop lol
I am fairly certain that plastic lid isn’t intended to be attached to the metal one haha
Where I can buy that Vacuum Chamber?
I built this one myself out of parts. I used a 32 ounce Ball brand food canning jar for the chamber. But any large glass jar with a tight-fitting lid would probably work. The vacuum pump is from a car brake bleeder kit that you can buy on Amazon or from most automotive parts suppliers.
Sar how process bamboo stick hard
Can you color it?
Yes I think you could. I've never tried it for knife handles, but I think you could put something like a Fiebing's alcohol based leather dye in there. Or maybe a RIT liquid fabric dye.
Add a shutoff valve near the top.
Pump it pump it real good
I use pine 1x's to build furniture. Would the moisture affect it if I paint and polyurethane the wood?
Sorry I don't know that one. I've only ever used this wood hardener to make knife handles. Maybe someone else can comment on this?
How many time does it take?
Did you notice much discoloration of the wood?
It does darken the wood slightly. But not much.
Hey brother, im making some pine counter tops. Would you recommend this to apply after a stain to make the tops harder?
I don't think it's hard enough for a countertop. This stuff is more like a grain filler than a finish.
So did you come up with anything to make softwood counter tops harder ?
Great video. Very informative. However, I'm kind of working on a special project and was wondering how well it penetrates if just brushed on. I'm hand carving a root system I found into a sculpture and the only way I can apply the gardener is with a brush. Will it keep it from splitting and will the hardener penetrate deeper if I leave it sit for an extended period of time (weeks or months). Or will it start to split again once I carve away so much. No worries if you don't know. Just figured I'd give it a shot considering how well you did this video. Thought you might have some insight. Thanks.
My experiments with brushing it on have not gone very well. But it would depend on how porous your wood is. Soft woods with open grain should take the hardener in a little better, but I've found that it doesn't penetrate tight-grained, dense woods very well at all. I've never tried it on root woods of any kind though. If you have any scrap pieces it would be worth experimenting with the hardener on a piece of scrap first to see how it goes.
@@ShawnsWorkshop Thank you.
@@ShawnsWorkshop I used it on a redwood tree root that I wanted to stabilize/strengthen to make it into a coffee mug hanging tree. Think about what the purpose is of the wood structure within a root... to transport water up into the tree. It sucked up the hardener like a sponge as I brushed it on, it took way more hardener than I expected to fully saturate the root.
@@3henry214
Did the root wood have much sap?
Will it still take a stain or varnish?
I haven't tried that. But my best guess is that the stabilized wood will not accept stain very well. I may have to experiment with it in a future video.
I'd like to know the answer too if anyone's tried this? I am wondering if better to stain first and then harden?
Nobody's soaking small cuts of wood, their most likely painting it onto joists, studs, windows, doors, etc. I was curious to see how well it fixed cracks or rotted wood, and if paint brushing it on fully absorbs into the particles & binds them together or not.
Soaking small cuts of wood for handles is quite common among knife makers. Minwax wood hardener has many uses.
Edit: Lathe woodturners making pens, chess pieces, spice grinders, tool handles, and other small objects also commonly stabilize small pieces of wood in much the same way as I'm doing here.
I tried soaking a small piece for 24 hours and when I took it out it had split. Any ideas what would cause this?
The wood hardener does cause the wood fibers to swell a little bit when it is still wet. It would be stable when it was all dry though. It is possible your wood had a micro-split in it and the slight swelling drove it open. Other than that I'm not sure. Was it a very straight-grained piece of wood? Small pieces of wood (as for knife scales) plus straight grain always runs some risk of splitting.