Using Epoxy Resin to Fill Cracks and Gaps in Wood - Complete Tips and Techniques

a lot of times we can end up with wood from multiple sources that have cracks and checks or voids for all sorts of different reasons and often we need to discard those parts of the wood but sometimes not only can we salvage the wood but we can even accentuate it by taking advantage of those crags and voids what i like to do is fill those voids with epoxy if they're little teeny voids i'm able to use like a five minute epoxy but typically for larger cracks and checks i'll go ahead and use a really good high quality flowable slower cure epoxy that's not thick that gets into every single crack cracking crevice that's out there for an example i've got a few things here i've got this log which i had acquired a piece of pecan which i took slices out of and you can tell from the slices that there's all sorts of terrible cracks and checks however this wood which is kind of a spalted pecan is absolutely spectacular i don't want to lose this by filling in the crack i'll be able to go ahead and accentuate those marks make it part of the wood design and be able to use these boards just like it would any other board that i have the first step before being able to pour your epoxy is to go ahead and seal off the areas on the bottom and the sides to make sure when you pour the epoxy it doesn't run out i like to just go ahead and use good old blue masking tape it works really well it helps to make sure you have a good flat surface you're working on what i like to do is look and see where the crack is the largest that's what i'm going to pour into on the back side i'll go ahead and cover this up and also the sides make sure you really rub the tape down strong it's important to make sure that if there's any leakage at all it just stays contained right where you want it same with the side and what i'll often do is go ahead and fold it over on the top to make sure it doesn't come loose i've still got a gap there where i'm able to go ahead and when i pour in the epoxy it'll go right into that gap but now i've got a nice little pocket here that'll prevent any of the any spillage for that particular crack i'll go ahead and get the other one if there's any sort of debris in the cracks i recommend trying to get it out for example i've already cleaned it out but there was a little bit of of dirt and barkish type material that was the inside i went ahead cleaned out what i could a little bit of a screwdriver and i should take a hacksaw blade and slid it into the crack in order to try to get all the loose stuff i cut out and then i blew it out with a with the blow gun nice thing is that there's still a little bit left in there the epoxy tends to soak soak into it and then go ahead and seal it up with all the rest so you end up with a good solid covering anyway okay it's time to go ahead and mix up the epoxy i'm going to go ahead and use total boat they have a high performance epoxy which is perfect for this it flows really well and it dries extremely hard it's obviously designed to be able to also be used as a glue and with fiberglass and to build boats for woodworkers though this is really kind of a go-to for just about everything you do with resin i like using the slow hardener it's um it flows really well it gives it time for everything to flow into place before it hardens it takes longer but um it works so well that i just don't like messing with anything else i just like sticking with it now for me i like to go ahead and tint the epoxy and i usually tint it black black looks really well looks like good thick spalt lines and it doesn't draw the eye and look fake when you do that i find if you try tinting with something like browns a solid hunk of brown just doesn't look like something you typically see in wood but for some reason black doesn't stand out as a as an oddity almost always i use this stuff called transtent most of us are familiar with it uh trans tint black all it takes is a few drops to mix in with the epoxy however i've discovered with lighter color woods like maple for example and poplar being a dye that when you pour it in it tends to flow through the cracks and can extend a little bit beyond it and leave kind of a black haze on both sides of the crack to avoid that i'll learn this trick which is to go ahead and use black grout non-sanded non-sanding grout is an extremely fine powder it mixes in but because it's not a dye it doesn't spread so it doesn't soak into the wood and therefore doesn't leave that haze you don't want to use too much of it because you don't want to have it to thicken the epoxy just enough to make it dark enough so that way you end up with the black finish now i'll go ahead and i'll show you um this particular set of epoxy is awesome because they come with these pumps i don't have to worry about measuring it's a two for one ratio so i'll just go ahead for now and i'm going to give it and one two three if this is boring just go ahead and count with me four and five okay now i know i have the right ratio you want to mix it for two to three minutes i'll probably go ahead and speed up the video as i do this but i'll tell you right now what i'm going to do is get it mixed up i like to go ahead and mix it before i put in the grout to kind of guarantee that i have no wishes with it and so i could see what's happening when you mix it make sure you mix it and stir up all sides of the cup you'll notice i have the cup at a bit of an angle by having it at an angle it allows me to go ahead and have the epoxy flow to one side as i'm working it which prevents me from having an unmixed buildup on the bottom of the cup so for me this has worked really well and i'll go ahead and speed up the video now as i continue stirring [Music] okay i'm going to go ahead and add a little bit of the grout now i like to add just a little bit at a time to see how it looks you'll notice everything is all mixed up it does have a little bit of a haste to it because it's got some air bubbles on there those will work themselves out as this sets i'll go ahead and add some grout right now just a little bit of powder to start with and i'll go ahead and mix that in see how it looks you'll notice it didn't take that much this is turning black very fast you want to make sure it gets in there really well and again scrape down the sides i used so little that it did not impact the viscosity of what i have here but it did turn it very dark one thing though don't don't let how dark it is be misleading it's better look and see how dark it is on the stick because you could see that it's still is fairly translucent sometimes it's not an issue but i'm going to go ahead and add just a little bit more just to be safe that should do it all right once this gets stirred in i like to let the epoxy sit just for a little bit to get some of the bubbles kind of rise to the surface and get out before i pour it by doing that there's less likely there'll be bubbles in it when it's in the cracks and you end up having a really smooth surface left behind and you'll notice that that's now much darker that'll be perfect right there carefully let it go in by pouring it like this at a little bit of a height it also tends to break up the bubbles as it's pouring i'm going slowly in there and it's just filling in the voids i could tell you now that i probably don't have enough mixed right now to get all of these cracks filled in at the moment because it's good to have extra to pour in the top when you're done i'll just mix up a little bit more that won't take much of an effort it's important also to make sure you go all the way to the edge put this here so you could see what's happening this part here where there's a crack you know it's almost microscopic once it gets to that end point and it's hard to see so i like to just pour extra all the way over and beyond you'll also notice possibly based on good the video is that this is not filled all the way the top the glue has managed to soak in has worked itself through and i'm going to go ahead and pour a little bit more okay filling in that valley as the glue continues to soak in i'll come back later and see if i need to put a little bit of a topper on it so to speak i'll go ahead and get this thinner one right now what you'll want to do is check back on this in about 15 minutes and see whether the epoxy has soaked in and has left more valleys if it has you'll want to come back and fill them in it's better to have too much than too little because when this is all done you're going to come back and sand or scrape or plane this the the extra amount off the top but all that i poured you'll notice i've already used a significant amount of it in here just for these two cracks on this piece i'm gonna go ahead and put this down okay it's now the next morning and i let the resin harden overnight it's really important to make sure the resin hardens up as much as possible makes a lot easier for sanding or cleaning off the excess as you can see i went back after the last video session and poured extra looks a little messy but that doesn't matter that whole layer is going to come right off like i said earlier it's better to make sure that you have too much than too little and i like to make sure that there's enough that it actually bubbles up over the top to guarantee that when it comes off you have no dips or valleys inside of where the resin was placed it's very very hard now i've got the tape here in the back you notice in this case no leaks i'll go ahead and strip some of this off and let you take a look you can see that this resin has worked itself completely through from one side to the other and along this crack as well so now this is completely solid there's absolutely no gaps in there and it looks like it was like this all the way through let's go ahead and take the rest of the tape off clean this up and i'll show you how i go do that okay i'm here at the planer i'm going to go ahead and take some very light passes to go ahead and remove this extra bulk of resin off the top of this piece this is one way of doing it the reason you want to take light passes is that since the resin can be a bit brittle if you take heavy passes there's a chance that it'll chip out a little bit as it goes along i like to take several passes along the way and you'll see the results other options include using a belt sander orbital sanders just go ahead and use a really heavy grit uh starting with something like 60 and then working yourself through i'll need to sand this obviously once it's done going through the planer but let's go ahead and take a look and see how this turns out [Music] okay here are filled in cracks i'm going to go ahead and just give this a light sanding and then a quick splash with some mineral spirits so you could see the final results [Music] all right a quick splash with little mineral spirits and you'll get a feel of what this will look like once it's sanded a little bit better and has a complete finish put placed on it you'll notice that the black absolutely pops along with the rest of the grain and you end up with a really beautiful accent to your wood there it is perfect results

Channel: Doug Pisik

Views: 135,641

Keywords: Woodwork, How to, Wood, Black Dye, Black epoxy, checks, wood repair, board repair, crack repair, bored repair

Id: F2obkwtyG-E

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021