Cactus Juice Wood Stabilizing Resin - 1 Gallon

Professional Wood Stabilization for Any Project. Whether you are casting pen blanks, hardening knife scales, or stabilising soundboards for guitar making (lutherie), Cactus Juice is the industry standard. The revised formula is a premium, heat-cured resin designed to impregnate and turn soft materials like spalted timber or porous turquoise into rock-hard, workable material. Anything that is soft and porous can be stabilised using Cactus Juice.

Elevate your woodworking game with this professional premium grade stabilising resin!

• Knife Making: Achieve a glass-like finish on handle materials. Ensures durability and prevents warping or cracking.
• Pen Turning: Stop blowout on fragile burls and worthless wood. Combining wood with soft materials like pine cones.
• Lutherie: Professional-grade stabilisation for custom instrument components.

Cactus Juice Stabilizing Resin is a premium, professional grade, heat-cured resin for stabilising and hardening wood and other porous material.

It's especially effective on those beautiful, spalted woods that are normally too soft to work with. Cactus Juice is easy to use and does not significantly change the colour of most woods.

Cactus Juice is not toxic, nor flammable, and it is not solvent based! It cures 99.99% from liquid to solid by weight; far superior to typical home stabilising solutions.

This is not an entirely new formula, just a revised one that will mix absolutely fine with your existing Cactus Juice. It still has the same curing temperature and vacuum time as the previous version, but with great new benefits such as virtually no foaming, 15% less bleed out and is as clear as water!

Cactus Juice is produced in Texas, USA, by Curtis O. Seebeck from Turntex Woodworks (if you have spent any time on wood-turning online forums you might know him as "MesquiteMan").

No, no cactuses were harmed in the manufacturing.

Cactus Juice will harden soft and spalty wood. Use it stabilise and harden wood - and other porous materials too.

Why should you stabilise materials?

1. Make it harder and denser. Like rescuing punky spalted wood so it can be worked and turned on a lathe.
2. To make it more resistant to moisture - must for bottle stoppers and to stop bowls from warping and cracking.
3. To add integral colour all the way through the material.

You can add colour using the Cactus Juice Stabilizing Dyes with no risk of the dye affecting the resin. *Please note with the revised formula, some settling may occur after mixing with the Bright Yellow, Coffee Brown and Lime Green Cactus Juice dyes.*

Some Alumilite Resin Dyes work with Cactus Juice (not all Alumilite Dyes are suitable). You can use the following Alumilite Resin Dyes safely with Cactus Juice: Black, Blue, Brown, Green, Ocean Blue, Orange, Red, Violet and Yellow.

Cactus Juice must be used in a high quality vacuum chamber, sold separately here.

It is heat cured in an oven, at about 85°C-95°C. We recommend using a small convection oven. For health reasons, don't use your kitchen oven due to fumes.

Before purchase, please read the full instructions on how to use Cactus Juice here.

This size of Cactus Juice is shipped unactivated with the activator in a separate bottle. Activating is simple; open the small bottle and add the contents into the large bottle. Replace the cap and shake well.

If some of the activator particles do not dissolve, allow it to sit over night and shake again the next day. Activate the entire bottle in one go. It is not recommended to activate portions of the bottle since it is difficult to properly proportion the activator. Once activated Cactus Juice has a shelf life of 8-12 months.

Approximately 3.79 Litres (1 US Gallon).
Also available in a smaller 1/2 US Gallon size here.

Quick Start Basics for Use

1. Prepare your wood blanks - sand, shape, and ensure they are dry and clean
2. Place your blanks in vacuum chamber and weigh them down
3. Add Cactus Juice to completely cover blanks
4. Apply full vacuum to chamber - keep your pump running until bubbles stop
5. Release vacuum and leave blanks to soak for at least twice as long as you had them under vacuum
6. Remove blanks and wrap in kitchen foil
7. Cure at 87-93.5°C (190-200° F) until Cactus Juice has solidified
8. Remove foil and leave to cool to room temperature

TOP TIP:

• Once activated, Cactus Juice must be kept below 29°C at all times otherwise it may cause rapid hardening. It is also recommended to keep the vacuum pump at least 1.5m (5') away from the chamber when in use. Vacuum pumps operate at a high temperature and can contribute heat in a workspace.
• After vacuum soaking, any left-over Cactus Juice resin can be filtered and poured back into the container, with a shelf life of up to 6 - 12 months after activation (do not store in an air-tight glass-jar).

Who is TurnTex Woodworks? Curtis O. Seebeck is the leading authority and a pioneer in the field of stabilising and casting and has been at the forefront of this industry with the following innovations:

• Cactus Juice Stabilizing Solutions - The first to offer affordable DIY stabilising resin and dedicated vacuum chambers for all types of stabilising needs.
• Alumilite Casting Resin - The first to start using Alumilite Casting Resins for woodturning and helped make it a mainstream casting product.
• Alumilite Clear Casting Resin - One of the most popular resins here at House of Resin, the Alumilite Clear Casting Resin was based on Curtis's needs and feedback to the Alumilite Corporation. Curtis did all of the initial testing to develop the current product including testing seven different versions until the properties that are important to woodworkers were achieved.
• Worthless Wood - The technique of combining casting resin with wood to form a unique, Hybrid Blank was originally created by Curtis in 2006. It was shared with the woodturning community through an article he wrote called "Worthless Wood - Salvaging Otherwise Worthless Wood with Pressure Casting". This technique has been used by thousands of craftspeople around the world since that original article.

Download Cactus Juice SDS here.

Regarding health & safety, we always recommend doing your own research, and make your own decisions on any precautions you need to take. Read the SDS and get advice if needed. We suggest ensuring you have good ventilation, and protect your skin and eyes (nitrile gloves only). If you work with a large amount of resin, or work with it often, you might want to invest in a VOC filtered face mask.