WEAR SAFETY CLOTHING AND EYE PROTECTION IF YOU DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS. This is the new, improved, MkII vacuum chamber which I’ve just finished building, for stabilising wood with methacrylate ester (as you do). (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7fbkt-YBgM for MkI). The vessel is a supermarket saucepan (Asda? about 10 years ago), with the lid from a very similar (but smaller) saucepan, bought one week ago from Tesco. The glass lid is tempered, and dome shaped so it /should/ be very resistant to the vacuum force (touch wood). The lid already had a hole in it for venting steam, so I used epoxy (both sides) to attach and seal the inlet pipe through it. I also put epoxy to seal round the heads of the rivets that hold the handle on to the lid, in case they were not airtight. The white stuff is silicone sealant which I put both inside and outside to form a proper seal between the glass lid and the metal band that encloses it. For a re-usable seal between pan and lid, I first tried a gasket which I cut from a silicone baking sheet (Tesco); this worked but was floppy and annoying to deal with so I used the white silicone sealant to fix it in place and this works a treat. When I fire up the pump (eBay), it very quickly evacuates the vessel… way quicker than the array of 4 “hobby” type pumps I was using before. The pump is hanging from a bit of bungie cord, to prevent it vibrating the house to pieces and deafening everyone nearby… this makes a huge difference. If you are still awake, thanks for reading. Any questions, fire away.
Post time: Jun-25-2017