Water Glass

[Don P]

°I'm going to try an experiment but wondering if anyone already has. Water glass is sodium silicate solution, many uses but a common masonry waterproofing, it is also used in sand casting to make a rigid sand mold, it hardens in the presence of CO2. I was going to try applying it to EWP as a finish. It forms a hard crystal, I was going hang it in the carpenter bee zone and see if they can get into it or not. I think I'll try some on some borated wood as well to see if they are compatible. There was/is a company called Timbersil that was marketing a product for exterior use that was I think a pressure treated form of this.

Anyway, I had my wife pick up some silica gel kitty litter and lye today so I'll cook up a batch and see what happens. I'm interested in what y'all know.

[SwampDonkey]

Water glass was what my grandmother used to preserve chicken eggs. I don't think it was the same. :D

[moodnacreek]

No answer here, just interest. On my house just about all the pine trim has been replaced with hard wood. I have studied and fought c. bees for years. They are somewhat unpredictable because the can drill soft hard wood and treated also if they want to. Here it was 100 percent w. pine but they are just starting to bore spruce.  Keep us posted.

[Don P]

I've had good luck with kilz type primers, hard coatings that are stronger than their jaws so hopefully this will be a clear dip or spray that will work, dunno.

SD, yup, the same waterglass (looks like I muffed the title somehow  :D)
Just submerge fresh unwashed, but wipe the poop off eggs, cover a inch or so and they will last up to a year. I think you want to buy it rather than making it the way I am though  :D

[mike_belben]

I blocked some bees into a cinder block once after putting a powder insecticide in at night and putting a scrap of steel plate over their hole.  By morning they bored a hole out the other side.

[Roxie]

No suggestions here but following along because no thread you start will be boring!  Get it?  Boring!  

Carry on, I am completely self entertaining. 

[Jeff]

By the powers vested in me, I ordain this to bee a Holey topic.

[WDH]

Holey Moley!

[LeeB]

That one had  sting to it.

[mike_belben]

I dont understand what all the buzz is about?

[Crusarius]

wow, and I thought I had bee grade jokes you guys are great

[Jeff]

Bee grade? Hey, buzz off. ;)

[Don P]

I whipped up the first batch yesterday afternoon. I didn't use any heat other than the pretty exothermic reaction itself. It didn't dissolve as much silica gel as it probably could have with some heat. It still made a saturated solution that was skinning and thickening pretty rapidly. When the boss saw what I was doing, and about the time I got the first good snort of lye gas, she elbowed me out of the way wearing ppe, a respirator and rubber gloves. We couldn't get a ph on it with what we have but I'm mostly curious about what it does to fasteners. I'll put some regular and galvy nails in ziplocks and pour in some of my brew to check corrosion.

While it was still hot I painted a scrap of dry pine heavily. A gloppy finish but it did cure overnight. I cut the remainder with half again the volume of water so it wouldn't all harden overnight. I'll paint some of that on another scrap today. I want to try mixing some waterglass with sand to make a hardened mold for aluminum casting.

[Don P]

We got back from a 200 mile round trip to the doc's midafternoon so I had a little playtime.

This is a pic of the 2 boards I slopped some waterglass on. The upper is uncut right after making it, pretty thick and still a little on the sticky side.
The bottom is with a ~50% cut of water in the concentrate. Not loving it for a finish but will figure out somewhere in the bee zone to hang them.


 

I decided to try mixing some with some pretty coarse construction sand I had and see if it'll stick the sand together well enough to make a decent 2 piece mold. The "purple drink" is homemade (kitty litter and lye) sodium silicate solution. I added just enough to dampen the sand.


 

A quick 2 piece cope and drag keyed form, or flask. I'll try molding the greenman on the right. The cope is the upper half, "the drag, drags the table", its the bottom half.


 

First I bedded the pattern up to the parting line in scrap sand then sat the drag on top, I'm building it upside down. The cope will get dumped and replaced with silicated sand later. Now its set up to fill the drag with waterglass sand to form the bottom half of the mold.


 

And here's the drag with sand rammed in, I'll give it a few days to harden up... hopefully  :D


 

If that works I'll flip it over, dump the loose sand out of the cope, dust the pattern and drag faces with talcum powder as a release and then ram up the cope.