The stuff from Burl Sales is mostly K&G stabilized, so that is what I am most familiar with. Works nicely, pretty solid, but may not be as heavy as some WSSI stuff I have seen. This can make a difference for people, the WSSI stuff may be too heavy on a lightweight kitchen knife. I have seen some stuff from WSSI from a friend who locally does wood turnings to a sick degree and it is heavy dense stuff!!
Drool over some of this stuff!! He was gracious enough to have me over at his shop and show me some stuff and give me some tips!!! He was also the one to give me around 40# of wood (hard maple with various figures to it) to play with!!!
http://www.marknantz.com/
He uses WSSI almost exclusively and has been doing the turnings for over 20 years. He knew one of the guys who tried to stabilize stuff years ago and had some wood from over 25 years ago. I got to see one of the sticks, rock solid, looked like polished marble. He told me that they used to use radiation to cure the acrylics in the wood and the stabilizing came about when they were trying to stabilize flooring material IIRC. I think the guy who started a lot of it sold stuff under the Wild Woods name, which is some awesome stuff! I have a few pieces of it and it looks pretty close to the stuff from Arizona Ironwood. Mark also had several pieces from WSSI...very hard, dense, heavy and glossy looking. Some people don't like the WSSI because it looks and feel like it is plastic.
On Craigs ebay page, he talks about the stabilizing process and how he restabilizes it with epoxy once he gets the blocks in. Neat info!! He also tells of open cell and closed cell stabilizing, which is interesting to read up on!
I am sending out a small batch of maple (5-7# dry) to both K&G and WSSI to get it dyed dark blue (K&G) and clear and some blue from WSSI to bring out the contrast since the maple is fairly light in color. Some of the wood is spalted, some is curly, others have a weird grain pattern to them. I think I posted pics a while back? I may send out a batch to Pat now that you recommended them! Prob going to do some Green and Reddish Brown from him.
I have around 30# of wood to get done and I was told the wood may double or more in weight once it is stabilized. Mark at Burl Sales told me that the pieces shouldn't be more than 1.5" thick for stabilized, I think so the material gets fully penetrated. I have some big 2x2x8" chunks of maple I gotta clean up and then trim down, but I gotta clean them up to get a better idea of the grain and how I want to cut them up.
For polishing the stabilized stuff, get the Micro Mesh sandpaper. Goes up to 12000 grit (really a 4K-6K) that leaves no visible scratches. I've used it on stabilized woods and it looks like it was buffed and then waxed with just the sanded finish. Really nice stuff, but the sandpaper itself is kinda smelly. It works quickly, too and can be washed and reused. I go to 400 or 600 by hand and then work my way through the 1500-12K Micro Mesh grits. The abrasive is a bit different and works smoother than other sandpapers.
