Epoxy on soundboards

[Farrell]

Sure it would - wouldn't it? If you have a relatively dry soundboard with a
coat of epoxy on the top surface, and then expose the board to a
higher-humidity environment, what will happen. The epoxy will slow the rate
of MC change, but the board will still attain the same equilibrium MC with
the environment as a similar board without an epoxy coating. If you have
that dry board and the wood tries to expand with increasing MC, won't the
top surface of epoxy (or the top 1/10 of a millimeter of epoxy-saturated
wood) be under tension because that presumably would not be able to expand
as much as the wood just below it?

Terry Farrell


> >But how would a thin coating of epoxy keep the top surface from
expanding? I
> >don't know what the tensile strength of a thin coat of epoxy is, but I'd
but
> >it's not much. Indeed, I do imagine that it would constrain the top of
the
> >panel a bit, but seems hard to imagine it doing lots.
>
> But the top of the epoxied panel won't be under tension - ever, will it?
It
> just won't absorb moisture and swell like it would without the epoxy, so,
> won't expand significantly. The panel isn't being passively bent by
> humidity absorption, remember, it's the initiating source.
>
> Ron N