Working With Abatron Epoxy

A wood window sill is so badly rotted it looks beyond repair.

After strengthening with Abatron’s wood repair products, the sill is in perfect condition.

Founded in 1959, Abatron manufactures epoxy and related compounds for industrial, electronic, architectural, and marine applications. Epoxy is a type of plastic compound known for high bond strength, lack of shrinkage, and other high-performance characteristics. In the 1980s, however, the company began to fill the demand for high quality building restoration products. The most recognizable of these, LiquidWood and WoodEpox, are ideal for rebuilding rotted wood. Used in tandem, these two-part epoxies can transform wood that’s decayed, rotted, or literally crumbling away into a material that’s both structurally sound and easy to sand, cut, carve, nail, drill, route, stain, and paint.

In other words, the repaired wood is better than new. When painted, a repaired porch post or corbel can look identical to the original. The surface of the patch can even be scored to resemble wood.

The end of a bracket on cantilevered porch was almost completely decayed.

The bracket has been strengthened and filled, then carved and sanded into the exact shape of the old bracket. The filled surface has been scored to create the appearance of wood grain.

As the name implies, LiquidWood is a low viscosity liquid which penetrates deteriorated wood fibers and structurally hardens decayed wood permanently with little or no shrinkage. It arrests any insect damage at the same time. LiquidWood makes an ideal primer for filling larger voids with WoodEpox. It can be thinned with Abosolv, another Abatron product. When mixed, it has a work time of 30 minutes.

WoodEpox is a lightweight putty that fills and replaces missing wood on window sills, door frames, shutters, posts, columns, and more. This shrink-free epoxy adhesive bonds permanently to most surfaces, and won’t slump, even when applied vertically or overhead. WoodEpox can be tinted, making it easy to repair wood that won’t be painted. When mixed, it has a working time of 20 minutes.

Wearing gloves, take equal parts A and B and mix them until the putty is a uniform color.

One of the many advantages of WoodEpox and LiquidWood is that they don’t release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. That’s one reason these GreenGuard-certified products have been so successful, especially in California, which has stringent air quality regulations on harmful chemicals in building products.

There’s an Abatron epoxy counterpart for just about anything that breaks or deteriorates, along with primers, fillers, adhesives, and even colorants for every step of the repair. Of special interest are metal-filled epoxies that can repair or rebuild anything from the kitchen sink to an off-shore oil rig, and formulations for filling voids in concrete that include Aboweld 55-1 and Abojet, a structural crack injection system.

Abatron’s lineup of home repair products.

As a company that likes to fill overlooked niches, Abatron recently introduced LiquidWood Cold and WoodEpox Cold for repairs in outdoor settings at colder times of the year. These counterparts to standard LiquidWood and WoodEpox are designed to work in temperatures between 35 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Abatron products have been used in restoration at historic sites across the nation, from the Hearst Castle at San Simeon to Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, Fort Ticonderga to the Statue of Liberty.

Published at Thu, 29 Apr 2021 22:20:58 +0000

Article source: https://www.oldhouseonline.com/web-exclusives/working-with-abatron-epoxies/