Re: Burls
David Walser
Jerry -- If the wood is not too punky, using thinned lacquer or poly is the way to go. It's easy and you already have all you need to do the job. And advantage to this approach is that resulting finished item will show no signs that you treated the punky areas -- provided you were going to finish the piece with lacquer or poly anyway.
Minwax High Performance Wood Hardener works well. There are two problems with it: First, it's relatively expensive. Second, it doesn't penetrate evenly. (Which makes sense. Punky/porous wood will absorb more of the wood hardener than will solid/dense wood.) This is a problem because the more heavily treated wood will take a finish differently than the less treated wood. Once the solvents evaporate, you're left with a hard plastic resin that surrounds and stabilizes the treated wood fibers. The plastic won't react to stain or finish like the wood. You have the same problem with wood stabilized with thin CA glue -- for the same reason.
Another option is to stabilize the entire blank with Cactus Juice or a similar product. The typical problem with stabilizing a large blank with Cactus Juice is getting the product to penetrate more than 1.5" - 2" deep. Since you've already hollowed the blank, that shouldn't be an issue. The next problem is finding a vacuum chamber large enough. However, it's possible to turn a kitchen pot into a vacuum chamber, so this problem can be overcome. (To use Cactus Juice, you submerge the item in Cactus Juice inside a vacuum chamber and use a vacuum pump to extract as much of the air out of the blank as possible. Then, you release the vacuum, which 'forces' the Cactus Juice inside the blank.)
Once cured, you have an item that turns and finishes more like plastic than wood. This is because the Cactus Juice, a plastic, has replaced the air spaces (both within and without the cells of the treated wood). This obviously affects how the item will take a finish. However, you can still get the look you're after by dyeing the wood before/while stabilizing it. Done properly, you'll end up with an object that looks just like an untreated turning -- the only difference being that the stabilized piece will be harder and more durable.
Stabilizing is becoming more popular among turners, so you may have someone close to you that already has all the necessary equipment and supplies.
