The vacuum system is a lot better. I’d like it if he tried cactus juice resin in a vacuum chamber. Then drop all 3 pieces in water for 72 hours and see if they absorb any water.

My experiments with brushing it on have not gone very well. But it would depend on how porous your wood is. Soft woods with open grain should take the hardener in a little better, but I've found that it doesn't penetrate tight-grained, dense woods very well at all. I've never tried it on root woods of any kind though. If you have any scrap pieces it would be worth experimenting with the hardener on a piece of scrap first to see how it goes.

@@ShawnsWorkshop Thank you.

@@ShawnsWorkshop I used it on a redwood tree root that I wanted to stabilize/strengthen to make it into a coffee mug hanging tree. Think about what the purpose is of the wood structure within a root... to transport water up into the tree. It sucked up the hardener like a sponge as I brushed it on, it took way more hardener than I expected to fully saturate the root.

​@@3henry214 Did the root wood have much sap?

That's an interesting question. What kind of wood are we talking about here? Wikipedia says marimba bars are made of super hard exotic rosewoods or similar material. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimba This suggests a very dense, tight-grained wood. On wood such as this, many finishes will have a difficult time soaking in. The nice thing is that woods such as those don't really need any additional hardener. They're already super hard to start with. Probably a traditional oil finish is really all that's needed and that's really just there to keep the wood from drying out and cracking. The wood should already be very strong and probably doesn't need much to keep it strong. However, if you wanted to experiment with super-hard finishes anyway, I'd skip polyurethane and acrylic and move straight to two-part epoxies or other more exotic industrial adhesives. West Systems G-Flex toughened Marine Epoxy might be a good one to start with. www.westsystem.com/products/compare-epoxy-physical-properties/ I use G-Flex on knife handles and it features a good blend of both physical toughness, but also retains a little flex which gives it better impact resistance. But again, with a super-dense wood, all of these things are just going to sit on the surface and will be at risk of flaking off under repeated impacts. Beyond West Systems G-Flex, if you needed something even stronger, there are a whole series of aerospace grade epoxies, but most of them aren't transparent, and would make for a pretty nasty looking wood finish. That being said, If I wanted stronger and more durable marimba bars I'd maybe look at machining them out of something that wasn't wood. Like G-10 laminate, paper micarta, or DymaLux resin-laminated wood. any of those products would be virtually indestructable for life and should require no finish or maintenance of any kind once cut and polished to shape.

@@ShawnsWorkshop Cool. Thanks Shawn!

Yes it can be reused. But it must be kept in a tightly sealed container because the solvent evaporates very quickly.

It might help a little. It depends on your wood type. The hardener itself isn't all that strong, and depending on the density of your wood it could be difficult to pull the hardener deep enough into the wood to do you much good. It penetrated well into my spalted maple, but spalted wood is pretty spongy to start with. Some of my later experiments (not filmed) showed that the hardener penetrates poorly into dense-grained hardwoods. If you've got a full 1-inch thick piece of good dense hardwood, it should be plenty strong enough for your post without any extra help. Adding the wood hardener probably wouldn't add much physical strength, but it could improve your wood's resistance to moisture and protect against weather checking if your piece is going to be outdoors.

I've made knife handles with my own Minwax stabilization and with cactus juice stabilized wood that someone else had done in a serious vacuum chamber and the cactus juice is definitely better in most cases. The Minwax wood hardener *does* work, in that it helps to fill the air gaps in the wood, but a good heat-cured cactus juice is much harder and tougher. As far as I know you can indeed add dye to Minwax wood hardener. I have used Fiebing's alcohol based medium brown leather dye in Minwax wood hardener to help define the grain in wood. I'd say that worked well overall, but it is difficult to judge the final color of the wood as it comes out very dark at first, then gradually lightens over the next week or so as the wood hardener slowly dries.

Sorry I don't know that one. I've only ever used this wood hardener to make knife handles. Maybe someone else can comment on this?

I don't think it's hard enough for a countertop. This stuff is more like a grain filler than a finish.

So did you come up with anything to make softwood counter tops harder ?

It should yes. I'm not sure what kind of tester would be appropriate for wood though.

I think that would work as long as you waited long enough for all of the solvent to evaporate out of the wood. This could take several days or longer depending on the temperature and humidity of your workspace. You might also try a different brand of wood hardener. I've had fairly poor results with Minwax Wood Hardener overall. Its just not as good as they say it is. You can see that here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jK6fptR4vsu3dHU.html and here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gtF8qsSlztq1p4U.html Other brands of wood hardener commonly found are Varathane Wood Hardener, Ronseal Wet Rot Wood Hardner, and PC Petrifier. I haven't tried any of these yet, but they might be worth a look.

Minwax Wood Hardener is the only product like this that I have ever seen. I suppose there must be equivalent products from other companies, but they're not available in my area.

@@ShawnsWorkshop just got wet rot wood hardener from ronseal in the uk fingers crossed 😆

No idea. I didn't test it for hardness. My goal in this project was to make knife handles that were dimensionally stable over seasonal humidity changes. This product and this method do seem to work for that sort of stability. But I'll test the other parameters eventually. I plan to conduct further experiments with Minwax Wood Hardener as time allows.

Yes it can. It is made to reinforce rotting and decayed wood.

@@ShawnsWorkshop thanks! I will definitely give this a try. Much cheaper alternative than having the stud replaced!

I don't think this product would do much to improve the load bearing strength of the wood. It's not very hard or strong once cured. Calling it "Wood Hardener" is probably wishful thinking invented by the marketing department. They should have called it "Minwax Wood Stabilizer" instead.

@@ShawnsWorkshop - Wood hardening should improve its load bearing capacity however. There are products out there that also claim to improve structural integrity. But the main point I was making is that this vacuum test could have been done with a sealant or other wood penetrating agent. I was expecting a test of the hardening :)

If you're going to follow my method. Step 1: Acquire a ridiculously large Mason jar...

@@ShawnsWorkshop lol

I built this one myself out of parts. I used a 32 ounce Ball brand food canning jar for the chamber. But any large glass jar with a tight-fitting lid would probably work. The vacuum pump is from a car brake bleeder kit that you can buy on Amazon or from most automotive parts suppliers.

I haven't tried that. But my best guess is that the stabilized wood will not accept stain very well. I may have to experiment with it in a future video.

I'd like to know the answer too if anyone's tried this? I am wondering if better to stain first and then harden?

Yes I think you could. I've never tried it for knife handles, but I think you could put something like a Fiebing's alcohol based leather dye in there. Or maybe a RIT liquid fabric dye.

18% resin versus 23.33 (repeating, of course) percentage of resin. In a 100g piece, that would in theory be 20g vs 30g. 10g difference...

It does darken the wood slightly. But not much.

The wood hardener does cause the wood fibers to swell a little bit when it is still wet. It would be stable when it was all dry though. It is possible your wood had a micro-split in it and the slight swelling drove it open. Other than that I'm not sure. Was it a very straight-grained piece of wood? Small pieces of wood (as for knife scales) plus straight grain always runs some risk of splitting.

Soaking small cuts of wood for handles is quite common among knife makers. Minwax wood hardener has many uses. Edit: Lathe woodturners making pens, chess pieces, spice grinders, tool handles, and other small objects also commonly stabilize small pieces of wood in much the same way as I'm doing here.