I’ve probably mentioned Accoya wood briefly in the past. It’s regarded as one of the better woods for making windows, due to it’s rot resistance and dimensional stability. Accoya owes these properties to the process of acetylation, which in a nutshell is pickling the wood.
Treating or modifying wood by subjecting a softwood to a vinegar, which turns it into a hardwood by preventing the cells in the wood from being able to absorb water.
So acetylated wood is… Pickled wood?
More or less. Yes.
Source: What is acetylated wood?
I’ve been trying to get some for a few years now but the suppliers won’t sell to the public. Luckily I bumped into a friend, John Paul, who told me that he had just got the local lumber merchant (Herzog’s Kingston) to order him some. I emailed them the next day and managed to piggyback my order on the existing order, thank you John Paul and Paul Gallo.
The wood arrived today and it will be a great help, especially the 2″ thick stock as this will be ideal for window sills. Currently I’ve had to laminate multiple layers of narrower lumber together to get the full thickness of a window sill (3.5″ tapering down to about 1.75″) but this is time consuming as every bit first needs to be run through the jointer and then the planer etc.
I’m hoping that this wood goes a long way as it isn’t cheap, this small order cost over $1600 (front pile). Incidentally when we were moving the wood inside, Aimee commented that the wood spelled of vinegar, so I guess it really was pickled!
By the way the original wood is nothing special, I believe its pine but the grade is high so no knots. It’s supposed to be easy to machine as well so I’m looking forward to working with it.
I bet Ian’s really pleased 🤣. Interesting, every day is a school day!
Measure many times cut once me thinks.