Wood hardening.

[GAStan]

Also be aware that once you treat it the characteristics will likely change.  It may become more brittle and not bend well-or the opposite may be true.  It is something you should definitely include in your experiments. 

 

Please share with us your results.

 

Glenn

[mikegr]

So basically I got the wood hardener product. It is a transparent liquid with water consistency and smells like glue for plastic models. I decided to do the "jam" test. I cut balsa 1 mm thick in about 32x10 piece. I coated with it with one layer then a second one after some hours (balsa absorbed it really quick).

 Another same dimension piece was given a couple of layers of one ingredient epoxy.A third one was coated twice with polyester.Each one was given  tested with a 200gr weight on it. One the right corner you can see the product (hardener, epoxy, polyester).

 

As you can see the first piece had a min distance of 5.5 cm from the table, the 2nd about 6.5 cm and the 3rd one 6cm. That means the epoxyfied balsa was the most rigid of all. Or at least, epoxy is as good as a wood hardener.

Note that polyester was well absorbed but wood remained sticky means that wasn't dried, perhaps more catalyst should have been applied, not sure if that plays any role.

[wefalck]

I actually thought that our discussion ran around hardening the surface. However, what you are effectively showing here is the creation of balsa reinforced epoxy resin, i.e. a composite material. I am not surprised that the epoxied version is much stiffer.