Hardening sap

[Wood_workur]

I'm working with some pine, and one piece has a sap pocket. Now when I got the wood, it was soft. While working on the rest of this project, the piece that I'm now using just sat for a year or so, and I recently picked it up to use, and the sap was rock solid. I liked the look of it, and decided to make that the outward facing piece. Now, I routed a profile that went through the sap, and its soft and stickey again. Aside from just letting it sit for a good while, what can I do to make it harden faster?

[atgcpaul]

Hopefully you can open this link.

http://www.finewoodworking.com/subsc....aspx?id=31880

You can do 2 things. Seal the sap in with shellac or to harden the sap
permanently, you need to heat it to 170F for 24hrs. To do this, the poster
built a 5 sided box (no bottom) from foil faced foam insulation. The box was
slipped over the pine which was stood on edge. An electric heater with fan
is positioned below it and the pine is heated to 170F for 24hrs. A flap is
created in the foam to control the temperature.

Paul

[Richard in Smithville]

Not seeing the actual section of wood, I wonder if you can dig the sap out and replace it with some epoxy? It will give the look of sap and stay hard once set.