: Perhaps someone else can suggest a link to a supplier of CPES.

Just happens that I stopped by the CPES people yesterday, bought some product for an experiment and got literature and MSDS. The CPES is +/- 50% solvents, a proprietary blend of 18 of them, most of which have very fast evaporation rates. This stuff soaks in very well at ambient pressure, but all bets would be off in a vacuum. Since the solvents are the vehicle that carries the solids (epoxy) into the capillaries of the wood, and since the solvents would flash off under vacuum, my guess is that penetration would not be as good as under ambient. I agree though that pulling a vacuum on the piece to dry it out is a great idea, and that isolating the pump from the resin is essential to pump life. Their claim is that under ambient conditions they have observed CPES travelling 20 feet in the capillaries of balsa test blanks, so a knife handle should not be much of a challenge to the material.

The CPES people can be reached at www.rotdoctor.com, and they ship direct.