Somebody on another forum gave me a tip.
If you wrap the wood in foil you can use a convection oven rather than an autoclave. I did a quick and dirty little test and the results are interesting.
On the left is untreated, on the right is way overdone at 2hrs 360*, in the middle seems indistinguishable to the wood I payed to have done some time ago, which was I think 3hrs at 180C in an autoclave.
The middle strip was 20 minutes at around 280. There’s a wipe of shellac and the color match to the top it’s sitting on is near identical.
I didn’t take any data cause this was just a ‘find out if it catches fire’ test, but at some point I’ll cook up a proper top.
It has the brown sugar smell and definitely the feel of autoclaved wood, however, in the autoclave the wood is also injected with steam which pushes out what I believe is the hemicellulose (?) so I’m not sure if the results are truly the same, but it’s interesting at least.
Being able to do one off’s from the privacy and comfort of one’s own home would definitely be preferable to having pony up enough wood to convince the autoclave man to do a batch of spruce.
Food for thought…
