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Drying wood

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I'm new to turning and a little afraid to try and dry wood myself. However, the cost difference between dried and green wood is significant enough to cause me to step out of my comfort zone. Does anyone have any advice or resources to help me get started drying my own wood?
 

hockenbery

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Turn the wood green then dry it.
One rule for air Drying wood is about a year per inch.
If you turn a 6” deep bowl from green wood with a 1” wall thickness you can dry it in less than a year and return it.

I started a thread on working with greenwood in the tips and techniques.
Includes 2 video from a demo - turning a bowl for drying. And. Turning a dried bowl
http://www.aawforum.org/community/index.php?threads/working-with-green-wood.11626/
 

hockenbery

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Also turning bowls and hollow forms to final thickness while green and letting them warp works well too.
Natural edge bowls are usually turned once.
If you turn them 1/4” wall thickness they will dry in several days so you can sand them and then apply finish

Also at least one of the clubs out in you area has a wood yard where members can go and get green turning blanks. Hardwoods were rare in plains but peopl planted more than turners can use.
 
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This is a subject that could take a book to describe all the options. You are right, the price difference is huge. Green wood is most often free. If you hear a chainsaw, find it and ask. Nothing to be afraid of, if free woods cracks, you just give it to someone who has a fireplace. No need for anxiety. I've dried mountains of wood, I have it stacked EVERYWHERE. Al has given good advice. Turning green wood can be akin to peeling a potato, and the perfect media to learn to turn. Even if you just turn 3-4" diameter dowels, you can learn to use a skew, and have spindle turning stock in a while. Of course the dowel will dry oval, but a quick return and you are in business. All wood drying must be done slowly at first. Not so slowly that it molds, but slowly enough that the wood does not see enough internal stresses that it cracks. After months of slow drying you can speed it up, even to the point of moving it to a hot attic space. Attics make a great kiln, at least where I live. Search terms to use are; green woodturning, microwave wood drying, recycled appliance wood kiln, denatured alcohol wood drying, freezing wet wood for turning, dish soap wood drying, boiling wood drying, etc....
 
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Decide what kind of pieces you want to turn in a year or two and process your logs into wood blanks the size you need and seal the end grain with hot wax or anchorseal. If you are turning bowls and hollow forms you can turn the pieces while they are green and then store them in paper bags or in a small room that maintains a stable humidity so they do not dry too fast and crack. There are plenty of YouTube videos that show different ways to dry wood and process logs into wood billets. If you turn a variety of items you will want different sized wood billets cut to different sizes with the end grain sealed and put them in a stable environment out of the weather so they can dry slowly. You want to sticker the stacks of wood blanks so they get air movement around the blanks so they can dry evenly.
 
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For bowls made from 1 piece of wood it is highly unlikely that it will dry without cracking so go the the green turning way. If you are located in an area with a lot of snow store the wood in a snow bank until you can get to it. Also join a club or check out a pro in your area say Trent Bosch.
 
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Bozeman, MT
You've gotten good advice above.
With Colorado's low humidity, too rapid drying will be an issue. If you want to turn green wood, put freshly cut half logs in large plastic bags and they will stay 'green' for quite a while. Otherwise, you will need to coat the ends of half logs or cut blanks with wax or latex paint and store until dry.

Best suggestion is to get together with experienced local turners who will be happy to help in all manner of ways. This is your closest club:
http://frontrangewoodturners.org/
We meet on the first Tuesday of every month from 6:15 to 9:00 PM in the basement of Rockler Woodworking and Hardware.
Visitors and new members are always welcome.
 

John Jordan

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I'm new to turning and a little afraid to try and dry wood myself. However, the cost difference between dried and green wood is significant enough to cause me to step out of my comfort zone. Does anyone have any advice or resources to help me get started drying my own wood?
What sort of things do you want to make?

John
 

John Jordan

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Pen blanks and small project woods are easily dried after cutting on the bandsaw. I would recommend rough turning small bowls which can be re-turned after drying, and its a very effective way of drying. PLUS if you rough turn a hundred bowls, you'll be a much better turner. I don't think there's a single better way to learn to turn.

Take a look at the wood articles on my website.

John
 
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Pen blanks and small project woods are easily dried after cutting on the bandsaw. I would recommend rough turning small bowls which can be re-turned after drying, and its a very effective way of drying. PLUS if you rough turn a hundred bowls, you'll be a much better turner. I don't think there's a single better way to learn to turn.

Take a look at the wood articles on my website.

John
And in the process of rough turning you can practise finish finish cuts.
 
Joined
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Aurora, CO
Pen blanks and small project woods are easily dried after cutting on the bandsaw. I would recommend rough turning small bowls which can be re-turned after drying, and its a very effective way of drying. PLUS if you rough turn a hundred bowls, you'll be a much better turner. I don't think there's a single better way to learn to turn.

Take a look at the wood articles on my website.

John

Thanks John! I did look at your website and read your article on green wood. I've been hesitant to waste wood but it sounds like I just need to jump in and not worry about the end result right now.
 
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Port Angeles, WA
Another advantage of sourcing and processing green wood: There's stuff out there that just doesn't exist at the hardwood yard, and, if you can read wood, you can get some really nicely figured stuff for pennies on the dollar vs. retail dried wood.

I have pens out of Lilac, wild plum, domestic plum, and Serviceberry. Beautiful colors, especially the plum-- oranges, browns, pinks, purples. For pen size stuff, I rip 5/8" square pieces on the bandsaw and stick them in my greenhouse or another sunny sheltered place outside for a couple weeks, then check on them. If I'm impatient, they'll go in the convection oven. There's almost always some checking near the ends, but I just cut that off when I'm making pen blanks.

You could dry it in a more controlled manner and get more usable wood, but I probably have 1000 bf of storm downed hardwoods in various stages of processing in my yard right now, and since I bartered my labor or finished products for it, it's close to free.

Also, if you research a bit on what causes figure in woods, you can get some nice figured stuff for firewood prices. Burls around here are recognized and go for big $, but I've been able to find heavily flamed maple from firewood guys. We bought a big maple round with some heavy flaming and a huge crotch piece for $50-- too big to fit on a log splitter, so he thought he got the good deal!
 
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Many of the commercial log milling operations do not like to mess with crotch logs if their main business is dimensional lumber. Most of the custom log milling operations on the other hand know that there is good money hiding in the hard to process crotch logs. You can also check with firewood companies, many of them do not like messing with the big crotch wood logs as they do not split easily into firewood. Some of the large scale farmers will clear trees from land when they are expanding their crop acreage, their is usually a lot of good pieces to be had after the commercial loggers cut and clear the marketable logs from these areas, all of the remaining pieces are picked through and usually burned at the site and then the charcoal spread into the soil.
 
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Many of the commercial log milling operations do not like to mess with crotch logs if their main business is dimensional lumber. Most of the custom log milling operations on the other hand know that there is good money hiding in the hard to process crotch logs. You can also check with firewood companies, many of them do not like messing with the big crotch wood logs as they do not split easily into firewood. Some of the large scale farmers will clear trees from land when they are expanding their crop acreage, their is usually a lot of good pieces to be had after the commercial loggers cut and clear the marketable logs from these areas, all of the remaining pieces are picked through and usually burned at the site and then the charcoal spread into the soil.

Good tips! if you also scout around after a storm, there's almost always downed stuff that's not hazardous enough to warrant calling in the tree pros (At least here in the PNW), but needs to be cleaned up. My experience is that if it was a nice tree, they'd rather see it get turned into art than just burned.
Stay away from anything with weird tension in it, though. Even if you think it's flexed one way, it might not go as planned, and a 5" branch is enough pinch a bar getting your saw stuck (DAMHIKT), but that can be the least of your worries if you're a novice.

It's a slippery slope, too. It's hard work, and chainsaws, safety gear, tools, and upkeep start adding up. There is rarely such a thing as free wood when you look at the tools and time necessary to prepare it.
 
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If you get into harvesting any kind of wood for use on the lathe, a truck or trailer and a cable winch, hydraulic lift or ramp is a must to handle the heavy wet logs. Large numbers of people get hurt each year trying to load cut logs into a truck or trailer, freshly cut logs are extremely heavy when you start looking at the size of logs that will produce appropriate sized bowl blanks for the average sized lathe you are looking at heavy pieces of wood. There are plenty of ways to load logs if you plan ahead and have the right tools to work with and a second person usually helps a lot.
 
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You are right, the price difference is huge. Green wood is most often free. If you hear a chainsaw, find it and ask.

That was my original motivation. Free wood, lots of it. If I screwed up, well...toss it and start the next.
Then I realized how much easier / nicer it is turning soft green wood
And the possibilities...different types, sizes, orientations...... I was hooked.

If you get into harvesting any kind of wood for use on the lathe, a truck or trailer and a cable winch, hydraulic lift or ramp is a must to handle the heavy wet logs.

All you need is:
- a really good hand cart, with great tires ~$100
- a trailer hitch and
- a Uhaul dealer. They have great drop deck trailers, with long tail gates. $15 a day.

Load the logs with the cart. Drive them onto the trailer.
I've gotten 5000 lbs of logs in one day this way, free. (ok, one big maple tree). 400 lbs per log.

:)
 
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If you have a truck with an open bed you can mount a HF hoist to pick up your green wood finds. The first time I picked up a heavy piece the hoist was mounted to the bed floor only, which was not good enough, so I fabricated the the bracket to clamp the column to the box side. The hoist works good for retrieving the big buck also
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Another option is to install a 12VDC cable winch at the front of the truck bed, you can stretch the cable out to the log and drag it to the truck and use a ramp or board to winch it up and into the bed of the truck. The hoist option does work well for stacking big cut logs on top of each other to make room in the bed of truck for additional logs if you have a heavy duty suspension. A truck rack or log arch mounted at the rear of the bed can be outfitted with a cable pulley which can help lift the end of the logs into the bed of the truck. This is where Olaf mentioned the drop deck trailers with a long ramp which provides the solution for getting the log from the ground onto the trailer. A simple ramp or board from the ground to the deck of the trailer or bed of the truck will also work well when using a winch. A log arch mounted on a truck bed or trailer bed is a great option if you plan to harvest wood on a regular basis, the log arch provides a fulcrum point to lift the log and pull it in the trailer or truck bed in one motion. This apparatus speeds the process greatly when loading quantities of logs.

You can always screw an eyebolt into the end of the log and use a tow strap to drag the log behind your vehicle back to your house and debark the log at the same time. :)
 
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Also, one option is to ask if you can cut blanks or slabs onsite. I've done this with most of my green and dead/wet wood gathering. Pulling a truck up to wood and winching logs into a truck is a lot more damaging to a yard/lot than the small pile of shavings (which you can clean up) from cutting wood into handable pieces. Small pieces destined for bowl work, I just cut rounds a little longer than the diameter, so there's wiggle room if the end starts checking. Big pieces I noodle into slabs that can be bandsawn to spindle blanks, one giant bowl, a few medium bowls, or a dozen small bowls. You'll have to turn quickly or seal them, but it removes a lot of backache and expense. We've even processed wood and loaded into our car, a Camry, before. It's doable, but you definitely run out of space weight-wise before volumetric space!

Noodle cutting slabs out of big rounds doesn't take as much saw power as you'd think. We have a Laguna 18|36 so we do slabs 18-20" long. We used to do it with a Husqvarna 440 with an 18" bar before it was stolen... It was much slower than our buddy's big 044, but it got the job done.
 
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If you know how to roll logs with a rope or winch cable you do not need to drag the logs across the yard with a winch. There are several videos on YouTube that detail the log rolling method with a rope which provides a good deal of leverage when moving bigger logs. Most professional tree companies will cut the tree into manageable logs that can be rolled across a yard. The low bid hacks will drop huge limbs in a yard and leave the mess for the home owner to deal with. If a tree has lengths of marketable wood with value the contractor usually ends up being the milling contractor or the arborist usually has the logs sold to a milling contractor before the tree comes down. Local arborists and local custom milling operators work with each other to put extra dollars in their pockets when good quality wood come down. Some of the crotch wood slabs are bringing good money these days if you have the client base and market in your area. Moving a big log with a crotch requires additional equipment when harvesting from a home owners yard if you do not want to tear up the yard.
 
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