Reply by Gary Fixler

Karson, thanks for all this great info! I’ll likely pick up a quart of Resinol to give it a go. I do love empirical data, especially when it’s my own. Then I trust it the most! Meanwhile, I think it’ll be quicker to get the parts for the chamber, and I can start some research with the crap wood sealer from Home Depot (Minwax) that some people claim to have had some success with. Then I can try the acrylic stuff, polyurethane, and others people have mentioned online, as well as Resinol when it arrives.

I have a good set of chunks of that coral tree stump, so I can do a nicely scientific test on many small 1×1 or 2×2 chunks in some short length, probably 4”-6”. I think I’ll resaw first in this case, which will open up a lot of the chambers, allow me to shake and pick bugs out, and then I can also sort pieces into matched piles, so I can do more accurate comparisons with like pieces across each kind of chemistry.

This is kind of exciting :)

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator