Charliebates

I've been reading about using antifreeze to stop wood shrinkage. Apparently it will soak right into the actual cells of the wood and dries and once done the wood will not shrink. It stops the cracking, checking and warping of wood and it works on green wood. The idea comes from wood lathing of bowls etc. to stop them from cracking and using a very wide plank as a table top or similar. I expect it will have great success on new wooden spoke wheels too. I haven't found any information of how it will work on dry wood. Antifreeze is also a great wood preservative especially if mixed with water that has dissolved Borax. I am presently testing antifreeze on a scrap of kiln dried spruce 2x4 for a project I'm doing. First I measured the width and thickness of the 2x4 to the thousands of an inch using calipers and six days ago I started by submersing the 2x4 into minus 40 degree antifreeze/water solution. Unlike soaking with water the 2x4 had minimal expansion of just 2-3 thousands of an inch after 6 days. I expected the wood to swell a lot but it has remained pretty must is stable. If I had a dried out wooden spoke wheel I would experiment by remove all the paint/varnish product and then submerse the wheel in water until everything tightens up. Then submerse it in antifreeze to see if it stops the shrinking. Wouldn't this be an amazing fix if successful? You can Google the antifreeze method to stabilize wood.

My first post on this AACA. I live in Alberta, Canada and would like to register my 1982 Berlina SE as AACA-SGVC. How do I proceed? Thx John in Red Deer