One night while cruising the Net I cam across an article on a knife building web site on stabilizing wood. In a few short words it involved placing wood in a jar of finish and usining heat to create a vacum to pull the finish into the wood. Has anyone tried this with reel seat inserts they have turned? How did it work for you?

If you do a search here I think you can find that information. I know some users were melting plastic and using that as their stabilizing medium.

Maybe somebody that has done it more lately can help. Also, Stephen at reelseatblanks.com probably has some experience with that sort of thing.

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Hi Sir some cane rod builders use plexigalls melted down with acidtone then put it in a pressureised steel pipe and bring the thing up to 125lbs psi and some use a presser cooker but it is like a bomb in your home and a fire hazard there are plans on the tip page of powerfibers that show how to build a small comercisl set up for reel seats but one would need to do a lot of reel seats to make it worth anything even Bellingers send there seats out as do we God Bless Jeff Rhonda and Kaya net pup

I don't know how well the"home brew" stabilizing works. One of the best commercial methods involves actually forming plastice within the wood. That process works very well, but the monomer to form the plastic is extremely flammable, and I would not try it at home. We have a flooring company near here that makes a plastic impregnated flooring that is beautiful and wears forever, but the process looks awful. I thouhgt about it, but after looking at the hazard rating of the material used I gave it a quick pass. You can send wood in to several companies and have them stabalize it for you if yoiu have some good wood you really want to use.
I have used some stabalized pen blanks to make inserts, and the material sure works nicely.

Kirk:
I agree with Jeff VanZandt, the "home brew" processes are VERY dangereous and at best mediocre as far as results go. We tried for nearly a year to produce a decent reliable stabilizng formula and we just weren't happy with the results. We used a reworked pressure cooker and drew a vacuum to draw the material into the wood. Worked okay for spalted woods but any other solid wood it just wouldn't penetrate all the way through. It was obvious we needed a positive pressure system and we just decided to say to heck with it. All of these materials are VERY flammable and are an accident waiting for a place to happen. We decided to leave the stabilizing up to the pros. I highly recommend Mike at WSSI (Wood Stabilizing Specialists) in Ionia, Iowa and Steve at River Ridge Products in Ladysmith, Wisconsin. Those are the 2 companies we use. I'd put their work up against anyone's. I hope this helps. If you decide to go ahead and try stabilizng yourself, I can give you a great deal on a slightly used pressure cooker..............................
Regards, Steve Kincaid

Steve Kincaid

There's really no need to stabilize wood used for reel seat inserts, there are plenty of good finishes out there that will protect the wood more than adequately for that use, stabilizing just adds more weight than any advantages can justify.
john

Hi for most rod makers they may not use stabilized woods for the reel seats but when I sell a $1200.00 fly rod it will only have stabilized wood on it to do other ways would be seting up a real mad customer even stabilized wood will swell a bit but nothing like unstabilized wood does when dunked in water I have seen unstabilized wood seats swell to the point that a days fishin was ruined do to swelling so bad that the rings could not move so on for sell rods and high end cane rods I will only use stabilized woods it is chep for all the benafits you will recive for it God Bless Jeff Rhonda and Kaya net pup

Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a water soluble polymer which has been successfully used to stabilize wood. PEG has a very low toxicity - it is used in laxatives - and does not require heat to saturate wood. You just "pickle" the wood in PEG. This stuff isn't cheap, but reel seats aren't very large. Selection of a finish coat to adhere to PEG stabilized wood is tricky.