Stabilizing Wood With DIY Vacuum Pump

Wood stabilizing is the process of injecting resin in wood by evacuating all the air present inside the wood via vacuum. Doing this create a stable and hard wood that is not affected by moisture.

Vacuum chamber built in this video:
And pid oven built in this other video:

I bought the stabilizing resin here:

Index of operation and materials:
0:20 Wood weigh before stabiliziation
0:35 Checking moisture content, needs to be as close to 0% as possible
1:05 Drying wood with pid controlled oven. 12 hours at 105°C (221°F)
1:50 Taking wood out of the oven before it cools down and placing it inside a sealed container so it does not absorb moisture
2:04 Leave wood to cool for couple hours, now moisture is very low.
2:31 Weighting down wood pieces with steel so they don't float in the stabilizing resin
2:40 Completely covering in stabilizing resin
3:08 Slowly raising vacuum to prevent excessive bubbling
3:47 Taking to maximum vaccum and holding it for 4 hours or untill bubble stop rising
4:14 Slowly releasing vacuum. Wood needs to be left soaking inside the stabilizing resin after releasing vacuum. (I left overnight 12 hours)
4:32 Packing each piece individually in aluminum foil
5:07 Lefover resin can be collected and used over and over
5:22 Curing resin (stabilizing resin activates with heat) 2 hours at 95°C (203°F)
6:27 Scraping excess resin

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Be sure to check description for more information and index of products and operations. And while you are there check out my Patreon page too for early access and voice-over edit of my videos. If you like what I do consider supporting me so I can keep on making:

[Apotixhmenos]

I have no idea what you've done but I'm always being amazed of your work 👍

[rmark]

I've never knew that the stabilizing of wood was a thing.
I ended up here from watching your video of you making the vacuum pump from a refrigerator compressor.
Its great to see people's ingenuity at work. Keep up the good work!

[placidrenegade]

Cactus juice sounds surprisingly delicious

[.x]

Info about vacuum machine like a gold! Watched like episode 2.

[OtherWorldExplorers]

Awesome video. I learned a lot from this one.
Especially the mistakes I would have made with my vacuum pump using solvent-based wood stabilizers. I would never had seen that one coming.
Thanks for the tip on using cactus juice. It looks very simple and I noticed you were able to reclaim unused product which is awesome!
Keep the videos coming we love them!

[gizemlioyuncugo]

I'm watching you from Turkey. And I love you

[kellyvcraig]

If you add a Tee and a valve, you can relieve vacuum on the pump, in case you have to start it, it won't have to start under load.

It was hot as hell this summer and the air couldn't keep up. As such, stabilizing wasn't an option using Cactus Juice or the equivalent, because it starts to cure in hot weather.

As an experiment, I used specialty hardening oil finishes. Specifically, Daly's Profin and Seafin. My results were great, though not quite the same as you'd get with the juice.

Some items doubled in weight and even thin end grain items because usable for things like knife scales. Simply sanding a cured item and buffing it produced results that would pass for a finished item. However, I only did that to see what the end product looked like.

[sycingenieriatube]

Te recomiendo hacer vacío primero y después incorporar el estabilizador manteniendo el vacío, se incorpora más cantidad. Saludos

[richardwalden]

would love to see a overall comparison of vacuum stabilizing soft woods and spalts. maybe set up a janka bench to see if it increases hardness and comparative stability of the woods?

[roboactive]

It would be cool to see a video where you compare 2 identical pieces of wood, one stabilized other one just normal. Then strength test them and test in water to see which one is best👍

[mill-techmanufacturing]

Thanks for this nice short video. This will help me on my first attemp at stabalizing.

[mdirtydogg]

Thank you so much for these videos. Especially the tips at the end. You saved us from making those mistakes.

[tonyj]

What is the name of the gasket material used to make your seal? Great video!

[mikeboone]

Great lesson those are the kind of tiny errors we make no better way to learn and never for get . Happy Trails

[chlyon]

Here's a question if I wanted to dry a large amount of firewood would using either a vacuum or a pressure vessel work for this application. Its more theoretical problem thats now bugging me

[LordCommanderEdTN]

Excuse the ignorance, but what is wood stabilization for? What do you do with stabilized wood?
I was watching a video of how to make a vacuum pump, and I came here by chance.

[RandomHands]

cool man ;) but i think you should do some solid restoration.

[ManuManu-htht]

Spectacular!! But the cactus juice is so much expensive... i utilized paraloid on aceton... but with the cactus resin the risultate is incredibile!!!! Good job black!!!!🔥🔥🔥👍👍👍👍👍

[SarvjeetSinghPME]

Intresting work, can you tell which material you used to cover the pan and its thickness ?