EPOXY SEALING TIMBER
I've always had a vague desire to own a boat. Generally the problem
with them is that they're awkward to handle on your own, and I
don't know people to go places with. All such concerns can however
be dismissed in the face of an irresistably low price tag, so when
I recently discovered a small old wooden boat for $400 at an
unlikely sort of second-hand store (an abandoned brewery full of
industrial equipment, building salvage, old cars, and excessive
numbers of rusty 60s/70s era busses) it made me think a little more
seriously.
Of course the small price was for a big reason - clearly the thing
was rotten and probably beyond the point of practical conventional
restoration for something of its type. Later on though, I started
thinking about the core issue with the rot, and how if it could be
halted before the structual integrity was compromised, the problem
would be solved. My idea was to simply seal the whole thing up in
exoxy, so moisture could no longer get in to extend the rot, and
seal up any leaks in the hull at the same time.
Back home I did a bit of web searching, and after a few promising
leads regarding nautical uses of epoxies in constructing new boats,
I eventually came across this old Usenet thread from one of the
countless newsgroups that unfortunately died long before I became
interested in their topic:
"Epoxy fix for old wooden boat"
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.boats.building/c/EVv5gcN8Oi4
(unfortunately Google have the only Usenet archive that goes back
this far, much as I hate to link to them)
The general consensus is that because the wood is sealed, any spot
that you miss, or gets damaged, with the epoxy will allow water
into a space where it can sit and rot the timber away even faster
than normal. In practice then, it's not really practical, because
you're always going to get a chip or crack in the epoxy somewhere
before long if the boat is in use.
So I haven't laid down my $400, which might be for the best anyway.
But the idea has still been turning around in my head. What might
work is if you can get an epoxy to actually penetrate the timber.
What if you had an epoxy that actually flowed through the wood like
sap does in a tree? When it hardens, it would form complex patterns
of sealed sections within the timber structure, so that even as one
part exposed to moisture might rot away, it would be segmented into
such a small layer by the sections of epoxy that it wouldn't make
much difference. You would effectively have multiple shells of
epoxy within the wood, and even as outer shells are penetrated and
rot, they continue to add a layer of protection for the inner
shells within the wood/epoxy structure. It would in effect be
invulnerable to the extensive spread of rot seen in a 'single
shell' epoxy-sealed hull.
This sort of epoxy sealed timber could be extremely useful both in
restoration, and maybe even as a building material in its own
right. But I don't know whether such a thing actually exists. The
epoxy needs to actually eat away at the wood, penetrating through
the softer parts of its internal structure, so I guess it needs a
corrosive quality to it, which must then be neutralised once it
hardens. Unfortunately chemistry is one area of science in which I
have praticularly little understanding. So short of finding an
existing product that can achieve this, it's difficult to tell
whether it's even theoretically possible.
- The Free Thinker, 2022
