"Dan Bollinger" wrote in message
news:mxZke.4010$IC6.1750@attbi_s72...
I decided to try out the LDD method, and while the jury's still out on
the final result, I did a little research to try and figure out just
how and why it might work.

Prometheus, Great thread you started! I contacted the Forest Product
Labs
and asked them about LDD and gave them all the technical information you
and
everyone else has provided with the hopes that someone there, or in some
university somewhere, this had been investigated. Here is there reply:

"Dear Mr. Bollinger,
Thank you for your email inquiry! We do not have any information on this
method of stabilizing wood. We do have a packet of information that uses
PEG (polyethylene glycol) ---this method can be found in our Wood
Handbook,
Wood as an Engineering Material
(http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fp.../fplgtr113.htm) "

Not what I hoped for. Dan

====A few years ago,I went down that road with the FPL and, if I remember
correctly, didn't even get a reply. I also sent an email to Proctor and
Gamble setting forth the issue and got a non-responsive, politely dismissive
answer from them. As to all the sound and fury emitting above, I am of the
feeling that an interested, motivated person with a half-way decent
microscope could set up an experiment viewing the action of LDD in the
presence of wood cells. I am now accepting donations for the purchase of an
electron microscope.*G* A number of years ago, Lyn Mangiameli attempted to
run a survey on the use of LDD but got so few responses that no conclusive
data could be derived from it.

As it stands now, as it did a few years ago, we are left only with anecdotal
"evidence" as the efficacy of LDD. I haven't been able to turn for a couple
of years due to back and leg problems, so only have maybe three year's
experience with it. As I have had a sovereign experience with it, I highly
recommend it. In that time, I have not had to study the nature of wood, as
it seems LDD manages to trump such considerations. "Fait ce que voudra" as
our Eastern Canadian turners might say. In more usual 'Merikin parlance:
"Ya pays yer money and takes yer chances!"*G*

Leif