"Father Haskell" wrote in message
...
On Aug 16, 6:51 am, Bob wrote:
Is there a good process for treating very light, porous wood (like
balsa, light driftwood, basswood) to harden the surface? I'm thinking
that there must be something that would be absorbed, then polymerize.
But it would have to start off low enough viscosity to permeate the
surface.

I know that heavy two-part surface coats (epoxy, polyester) could
essentially 'plate' the surface, but I'm hoping for something that
would integrate with the wood to be just a bit more natural.

Epoxy thinned with lacquer thinner. Any way you could get
the piece into a vacuum chamber?

If the epoxy is really slow cure (like 24 hour), it has time to evaporate
before the epoxy is really hard. But the stuff we talked about wicks into
the wood pretty well on it's own without being thinned.

Dave Hajicek