Its been quite some time since I have been on here.
Home remedies...
A porous wood like oak or curly maple needs to be well dried. It takes a bit of time but if you have a box with a small muffin fan in it, it speeds things up quite a bit.
You can use Minwax Wood Hardener to "fix" the wood. You can use it while you are finishing the handle. This will take a lot of coats and doesn't get down much past the surface of the wood.
Way back around 20 years or so, some folks were using a super glue finish but not only is it a pain in the butt it looks like plastic when you are done. Looks kinda like the stock on an old Remington Nylon 66.
Texas Knifemaker's has a product called Cactus Juice but I haven't used it.
As mentioned, some woods are too dense to be stabilized. Such woods as desert ironwood, cocobolo, ebony, etc. Well you are just wasting your time. A couple of other woods come to mind. Lignum vitae and guayacan. They are just too waxy to be stabilized.
Craig
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"When I first started, I didn't know anyone that made knives. Now, all my friends are knifemakers."
Last edited by C L Wilkins; 04-18-2017 at 07:46 PM.
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