Can resin displace water in chipboard?

[jerrys]

The answer is simple.No! Flakeboard ( there are several grades) was not designed to be wet..once water gets in around the open edges,its goodbye.

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

If you can dry the wood thoroughly first then take thin epoxy and thin it even more with alcohol or maybe acetone, it will penetrate wood, sound silly, but every one who built fuel powered model airplanes used this method to "fuel proof" the wooden firewalls of models and it works.
Model airplane stuff I know, but get some, try it out first on something else first to see if you like the results, I used to use the high purity alcohol content stuff you get at paint stores, rubbing alcohol has a lot of water in it

http://www.amazon.com/Finish-cure-20.../dp/B001NIC3VW

The down side to thinned epoxy is that it is no more waterproof than the chipboard it bonds too, and adds very little strength. It also doesn't meaningfully improve penetration into the wood. It's a product with no good uses, and a very impressive advertising campaign.


To answer the OP. No resin will displace water once it has entered the wood. The wood must be dried by other means first, to allow space for the epoxy to enter. If the wood is already rotted then there is no real solution other than to cut out the bad and scarf in new wood.

[deblen]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

I am grateful to Greatful, Thanking to Gord and can sleep assuring Snore that its not a deck problem.

It's behind the sink where the faucet farrahs. (Boom-tish).
I am trying to replace the tap - a 10 minute job - and the timber under the laminate is damp, and it can not be replaced easily.

So I am thinking things out slowly.

I have just bypassed the sink by removing the faucet and will not use the sink (yippee!) and will work on drying the timber pending the next (miserable) step.

Mark

Not sure about the "timber" you mentioned-but if the only part that is wet/soggy/swollen is the formica covered oatmeal & horse pucky flakeboard counter top, this is what I did for a similar home repair .
Carefully chisel away the soggy stuff-it releases fairly easily from the formica & contact cement. A hairdryer carefully applied to formica top will help release the old contact cement.
Replace bad flakeboard area with new ply or solid wood & bridge the new patch with another piece of ply or solid wood that can be glued/epoxied to original solid flakeboard,etc.
You may need to remove sink to make this easier & you may have to cut gap in second wood layer if your tap spigots & nuts are too short to go thru that thickness.

Cheers/ Len

[Isabella Jane]

If you can soak the area in ethylene glycol ( common antifreeze, 100%) it will likely penetrate the damp area and is a superb anti fungal. I have used this method on my boat and my wife's fungal toe nails. It really works! Stop fungi? [Archive] - The WoodenBoat Forum

[Wotname]

Let me add to the voices who say no to solvents in epoxy.

As soon as you add solvent to epoxy, the cured result is not waterproof. It will resist water for awhile but only 100% solids epoxy will be water vapour proof.

[Scaramanga F25]

I have had adequate success with : "GIT-ROT ".

[chris95040]

Just keep in mind there is a difference between "thinned" epoxy, and "thin" epoxy.

Smith's CPES is "thinned". I only use it places where the solvents can flash off. (I use it as a "primer" under 2-part poly brightwork.) Super watery.

Jamestown Distributors makes a penetrating epoxy under their TotalBoat brand now that has a lot fewer thinners, but still has some. Not sure how much. Never used it. Viscosity = 50CP.

EpoxyProducts.com sells a "Low-V" epoxy, which has no thinners whatsoever. Its just a refined epoxy resin that has a really low viscosity. Viscosity = 175CP.

West system viscosity is about 750CP.

Other viscosities, for reference:

Motor Oil SAE10 or Mazola Corn Oil 50 to 100
Motor Oil SAE30 or Maple Syrup 150 to 200
Motor Oil SAE40 or Castor Oil 250 to 500
Motor Oil SAE60 or Glycerin 1,000 to 2,000
Karo Corn Syrup or Honey 2,000 to 3,000

I'm going to try some deck repair using the low-v epoxy. I'll let y'all know how it goes!

[Curious Sailor]

I've cut out some wet wood areas and saturated the damp ends with acetone prior to repair. The acetone seems to do a great job at accelerating the evaporation process... From my experience anyway.

[Stumble]

Chris,

The issue is that there is no advantage to thin epoxy in almost all applications. Unless working with infusion, vacume bagging, or something equally esoteric. The depth that epoxy penetrates into wood is meaningless. Structurally the weak point is the first cellular layer where there is no epoxy. No matter how deep the epoxy penetrates that is where the bond will fail.

From a waterproofing standpoint again it doesn't matter. The epoxy coating the substrate prevents the vapor intrusion. It never gets to the under layer.

It simply does not matter how viscious epoxy is for 99.9% of applications because the viscosity doesn't effect the finished product in any way.


Finally Smith's CPES/gift rot is absolute junk. There is absolutely no good use for it. Unless you need a non-waterproof epoxy that is a terrible glue, and very expensive.

[Liam Wald]

The wood needs to be bone dry and even then the epoxy will not penetrate all that well unless you vacuum bag it.

[MarkJ]

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. I have taken them onboard and sold my boat and bought the Queen Mary (with 14 swimming pools and 50 maintenance staff).

I will think it out over the weekend

Of course one of the difficulties is its upside down. I can't push epoxy up into it.

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by Liam Wald

The wood needs to be bone dry and even then the epoxy will not penetrate all that well unless you vacuum bag it.

It penetrates just fine. Again there is nothing to be gained from epoxy penetrating deep into wood. It adds exactly zero of note except weight. It is the encapsulation of the wood in epoxy that preserves it, not the depth of the penetration.

[hsi88]

I will agree that penetrating epoxy by itself will not penetrate wet wood very well, nor will it penetrate solid dry wood. But if you are trying to salvage rotted wood and have access to it, penetrating epoxy does a pretty fine job. Sure, you could tear up your deck or transom and re-fiberglass that section, but unless you are a pro, it never looks the same after that. And the expense to have it done is through the roof.

People that say penetrating epoxy is junk haven't used it or they used it for something it was not intended. I restore old boats and its not my wish to spend thousands on a boat that barely has that much value. I drill holes where needed, use antifreeze/borax to kill spores, dry the wood out, use acetone to displace some of the water, let that dry out, then pour in Total Boat Penetrating Epoxy. Its thin, so you have to dam it off where needed. But when it cures, its pretty damned solid. It might not take all of the flex out of a soft deck, but it vastly improves it. Try it for yourself sometime. Works better than you would think. Look at some of the reviews. It would not review well if it didn't work.

[Panope]

System three T-88 epoxy is designed to be used on wet wood.

T-88 - System Three Resins, Inc.

"For well over 25 years T-88 has been the most widely used structural adhesive for marine and general woodworking use in the United States. Mixed at a 1:1 by volume ratio, T-88 will cure at temperatures as low as 35ºF. When fully cured, it is unaffected by water, oil, kerosene, and many other chemicals. It will not stain wood and is immune to fungus and rot. T-88 is unique in that it may be applied to damp wood, provided it is worked well into the surface"

Steve

[a64pilot]

If the wood is dry, thinned epoxy will penetrate it to some extent, and it will waterproof wood to some extent, I've done it too many times on plywood in model airplanes, not much will penetrate unprotected wood faster than alcohol, which is the base for model airplane fuel, and you clean it off with windex, which obviously is water based. Vacuum infusion would of course be better, but how you going to pull that off?

There are many brands of nearly completely waterproof engineered wood, call it chip board or particle board, whatever you want, but it's the adhesive used to hold it together that determines it resistance to water, phenolic resin I believe is one name or type of glue that makes the stuff pretty water resistant, so as with everything else, there is good stuff and not so good stuff, besides get almost any wood wet and keep it wet for long periods like a leaking pipe or something and it will rot.

But it seems what he is after is not structural, but a way to try to prevent further damage, and what's to lose here by trying some penetrating epoxy?


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