Chris Scott

I use one of these, works great, not silly money but nice quality. https://www.wealdentool.com/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Bottom_Trim_249.html

Bright colours certainly do exist and I make blanks like that for my living. Here are some pics in a slideshow of stuff i've stabilised recently. Blocks List 6 Slideshow by usmanicus | Photobucket

Looking good Blaise

If that is indeed a decent sized burr at the base of the trunk (its look like one) I'd gladly buy that. Always on the look out for a nice bit of lime burr.

Take a mooch through my photobucket theres all kind of pics of stabilizedc wood in there from very recent upto a year or so old. Chris Scott's Recent Uploads | Photobucket

Just saw this thread, so sorry for the slow response, I am a wood stabilizer mostly making blocks for vaping mods but a block is a block so happy to help out and process some wood for a small fee. I'm up at vapefest in shrewsbury this weekend taking about 100 blocks with me if anyone is interested. Hardwoods process well, yew is a bit tricky and doesn't respond well to it due to it being so resinous itself. The holly would be no problem though, should come out rock hard and polish up like glass.

I do wood stabilizing with Cactus juice, but the biggest peice i could do would be about 6'' square and a foot long, As that's the limits of my vacuum chamber. The cost would also be quite high for that size piece depending just how soft it is and how much resin it absorbed. Potentially a peice this size could take up £40-50 of resin. However, you can still get a good result without vacuum if you can get the peice that you want to stabilise completely dry - a couple of days in an oven at 110C and then soak it submerged in cactus juice for a week then back into the oven for a day to cure it. It won't be 100% stablized but it'll get most of the way there without vacuum if its spongy to start with.

I do quite alot of this and I use a polyurethane casting resin. But the peices that I do are very small and fit into a pressure pot while they cure so that any air bubbles in the resin and compressed out. I use various dyes and mica powders to get different effects into the resin, Pearl ex powders are great. A good friend also does inlaying like this of small coloured logo's into his work, he rout's out the logo then fills it with coloured (dyed) 2 part epoxy.

Is any of this for sale?

I paid £350 for it including the auction fees and another £200 to get it moved.

I bought this one, were you the opposition?

Like it, I do alot of filling in with resin, never considered using metal. I'd have reservations about using Pewter due to the lead content depending on the final purpose of the item, but some kind of lead free solder could be effective if its not prohibitive cost wise. Let me know when your having a yard day, I need to pay you a visit!

Steel conduit fittings perhaps, you can get a 32mm female bush and male plug to fit it I think. https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/CO32FBB.html

Lovely work Ian

West Mids, near Solihull