Planning For Epoxy

The stick chair has been patiently waiting for a couple of weeks for the last bit of work before finish.  What has it been waiting for?  A German shipping company to get it's act together to deliver some epoxy I ordered.

A shipping company took more than two weeks to deliver this epoxy.  Note one of the containers is damaged, but luckily no leaks (yet).

I took some advice from The Collective, and decided the way I wanted to fix the bits of my chair that weren't quite right, is with filling the holes with epoxy.

An example of what I want to fix.

Most of the advice was to bore the end of the stick out, and insert a plug.  I decided against this, as the arm itself is not real thick, and the sticks are drilled at angles, complicating the whole thing a little.  A couple of folks suggested (like Dyami) to fill with epoxy, and Aymeric suggested the brand West Systems.

Having looked up West Systems products, I chose one that I could get here in Germany and one that was labelled as being especially clear in color.  This stuff is favored by boat builders as a finish.  If it is good enough for wooden boats, it is good enough for me.

Besides, I probably have enough now to fix about a thousand chairs!

Before I wreck my chair, though, I thought I would do a bit of practice.  We have a bamboo cutting board with a hole in it because someone in the house (I won't say who) decided to use it as a backing board when drilling a hole rather than going to the shop to get a piece of scrap.

The test piece.

The product I chose from West Systems had a recipe of 2/3 resin to 1/3 hardener.  I precisely measured this ratio out by eye-balling it.  With a small stick I dropped some into the hole and wiped the extra off with a paper towel.

Action shot.

Here is what it looked like when I left it to dry.

After an hour or so, it became clear that some of the epoxy was being 'sucked' into the wood.

After an hour of drying.

This morning, the epoxy had drawn in noticeably.

Wood suckage over night.

I think that I would rather this not happened when I try this out on my chair for real.

My plan is to use a chisel to pare a small amount of wood off of the end grain of the stick to clean it up, and drip some epoxy in the hole.

Has anyone else had this happen using epoxy?  I am wondering if the hole I am trying to fill needs pre-treating or multiple coats?  Is there a way to get this to work with just one application?  Am I doing something wrong?  Could I be misinterpreting my results?

Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.