My first workbench
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Hi guys,
I’m currently building my first Paul Sellers workbench.
I’ve chosen spur, and as I’m planing I’ve noticed that some little resin areas started to appear.
The more I plane, the bigger the area becomes.
What do you do with it?
How do you handle this?
Just leave it as it is, or do you fill it with wood filler, super glue, etc?
It’s kind of sticky.Thanks.
I also use woods like this, and the first question is ‘can I change the position so that it is not an issue?’. So is it possible to flip the piece and have the resin pocket away from the top or outside of the workbench.
If it has to be on a work / show surface, then I would try to use a skewer or nail to remove as much as I could. If you get enough out, then sand/saw dust can fill in the void. If you have the time, stand the piece vertically, somewhere warm, put some tape at the bottom edge of the pocket, and some of the resin will flow out naturally.The sap will eventually crystallize and stop running, so it’s not all bleak.
You can get small amounts off with most any salad oils if the sap is fresh, followed by a cleaning with soap and water to get the oil off.
A more effective solvent is alcohol. You know that gallon of hand sanitizer you bought at the start of the pandemic? You can now put some to good use, as it’s 70+% gelled alcohol. Work it into the sap and wipe off. Turpentine also work, but I avoid that, as most turps sold nowadays is a heavy metal nightmare with all the driers in it.Once you have cleaned the sap off so it isn’t s sticking mess, you can seal the wood with shellac, which will greatly slow or stop the flow of the resin. This won’t work on a glue surface, as the shellac doesn’t play nice with the glue. The best strategy there is clean, then glue up right away and hope you have done a good enough fitting job on the glue surfaces to trap l the resin in until it hardens.
Or set that wood aside for a year until the sap stops and use it for a future project.
Good advice from Colin and Larry. I have done both at different projects with very good result.
On my workbench I did as Colin said and filled the void with sawdust. Really packed it in there. Then I used CA glue (thin superglue) to soak the sawdust. After it set I sanded the area flush. It has been holding up good so far.
I would guess this way might not work so well if the sap pocket is very big/wide as it could feel “hard” compared to the wood surface and maybe crack if hit with a pointy object, depending on how deep the sawdust was soaked with superglue that is.
Thank you all for the inputs.
On one piece I removed the resin with a knife with a dull blade.
On other piece, I left it standing vertical for 2-3 days, so that the resin could flow out naturally.
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