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Having neatly gathered all the necessary equipment, I finally decided to give handle stabilization a try. I drew the inspiriation from Ariel Salaverria's great article on the subject, and did pretty much everything the same. I chose a nice walnut stock, completely dry and carved a handle out of it for one of my nessmuk blades. Joined the vacuum, mixed the polyesther resin and voila - everything went as expected, and when the resin started to show up in the vacuum pipe, I shut off the pump, cleaned the excess off the handle and left it to cure. When I started to sand it next day, I was surprised. I expected something completely plastic-like, but the feel and touch of the handle was barely different than before. It seemed to be smoother and a bit harder though. I have to admit that I never touched any stabilized wood before. Is it okay to have a wood-like feeling when sanded, or should it be more like some kind of plastic? Did something go wrong during stabilization? I'm clueless. Thanks for the input.