The Wettability of Wood

The ease and effectiveness with which a liquid can spread over a solid surface is of fundamental importance in processes such as adhesion, surface coating, wetting and waterproofing, detergency, and penetration of porous media. There is, however, much misunderstanding of how the surface property of wettability may be defined and measured, and this inhibits a clear understanding of many of the processes mentioned. This paper describes a technique for measuring solid surface tension of solids and for calculating the free energy of wetting and the energy of adhesion of any liquid. Wettability constants were determined for, six softwood and 13 hardwood species before and after sanding. The study shows that contamination occurs rapidly on freshly cleaned surfaces and that adequate wetting of a timber surface is a more important problem than adequate adhesion.

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