I don't cut down trees for my wood, but buy turning blanks from e-bay and web site lumber places. I get many blanks kiln dry but also many that are wax covered and advertised as green. All I know about the wood is it is 20 percent or higher moisture content as that is as high as my moisture meter reads. Need some thoughts on what I should do. Just let the blocks sit for years to dry, or treat it like a fresh green wood, turn it over-thick and let it sit in a bag for a few months? I would think that purchased bowl or spindle blanks would be drier than a fresh cut, but would I be taking a chance of cracking and warping if I turned it final? I really don't know of the effects. Any tips would be appreciated.
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Green Wood Question
- Thread starter LANKFORD
- Start date
DMcIvor
AAW Staff
green wood
Moisture content in wood you get from sellers on eBay and other on line sources will be all over the map. I've lost several pieces that looked good when they arrived, but promptly split and fell to pieces in my very harsh climate. About the best you can do is rough turn bowls and other open forms and set them aside to dry. There are a variety of tricks out there for speeding the drying process for rough-turned forms--a lot of folks seem to like the alcohol soak, and I've had some success with that technique. Others boil, soak in soap...you name it. You can try any of these techniques for face turning and shorten your seasoning time from years from an unprocessed blank to a few months or even few weeks. Spindle turning stock doesn't fair well with these approaches. For spindle stock I try to purchase wood that has already seasoned for months (or years, depending on thickness) so that I don't have to store it during the seasoning period.
Don McIvor
Carson City, NV
Moisture content in wood you get from sellers on eBay and other on line sources will be all over the map. I've lost several pieces that looked good when they arrived, but promptly split and fell to pieces in my very harsh climate. About the best you can do is rough turn bowls and other open forms and set them aside to dry. There are a variety of tricks out there for speeding the drying process for rough-turned forms--a lot of folks seem to like the alcohol soak, and I've had some success with that technique. Others boil, soak in soap...you name it. You can try any of these techniques for face turning and shorten your seasoning time from years from an unprocessed blank to a few months or even few weeks. Spindle turning stock doesn't fair well with these approaches. For spindle stock I try to purchase wood that has already seasoned for months (or years, depending on thickness) so that I don't have to store it during the seasoning period.
Don McIvor
Carson City, NV
Green Blanks
I think that the only person to benefit frompreparing green wood in this way is the person selling it.
If you acquire your own own fresh cuts logs, and keep them in the log (either split through the pith or whole), and there is any degrade over time, you can usually cut out the degraded ends and have plenty of wood left to use. In preparing them them as blanks you have little to play with should there be any degrade...and despite waxing there still may be. And as you will have paid a premium for the preparation of the blanks they will stand you at more than their true wet-wood value and you won't want to lose them.
As a consequence I would treat as wet wood, rough turn, season and then finish turn. This, of course, is only a general rule, and will vary depending on your storage and local conditions and species. For instance, here in the UK I very often turn wet Yew to finish and have not yet lost a single piece as a result.
So happy turning and good luck.
Andy
I think that the only person to benefit frompreparing green wood in this way is the person selling it.
If you acquire your own own fresh cuts logs, and keep them in the log (either split through the pith or whole), and there is any degrade over time, you can usually cut out the degraded ends and have plenty of wood left to use. In preparing them them as blanks you have little to play with should there be any degrade...and despite waxing there still may be. And as you will have paid a premium for the preparation of the blanks they will stand you at more than their true wet-wood value and you won't want to lose them.
As a consequence I would treat as wet wood, rough turn, season and then finish turn. This, of course, is only a general rule, and will vary depending on your storage and local conditions and species. For instance, here in the UK I very often turn wet Yew to finish and have not yet lost a single piece as a result.
So happy turning and good luck.
Andy
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Andy Coates said:
Absolutely! Anything "in the block" is going to be uneven in moisture content in to out unless it's been held under close humidity control, so open out those surfaces so that they can become more equal. Best practice.
Leaving wet wood in the block is like hanging a "kick me" sign on your back. To paraphrase Tip O'Neill, all shrinkage is local, so by diminishing the size of the locality you both diminish the magnitude and modify direction of the shrink to a much more manageable level rather than letting it choose its own weak spots along which to fracture. Additional benefit is that wood loses (or gains) moisture through the end grain rapidly, so drying to EMC is days or weeks. In Carson City it might be a good idea to try and extend the days into a few weeks. Alcohol is a fad which should have died unborn, glycerol in dish soap is a great sanding lubricant, but little else, and boiling is for shape, not dry. Wood dries by loosing water to dilution with air, and the more the air is capable of carrying away at any time, the faster the change. You just want to control loss to a rate where the end checks don't form or grow.
Which is the other difficulty with leaving in the block. Not only does the vulnerability to radial checks increase, but even wax can't prevent all end checks. Or worse, some unscupulous sellers use it to mask existing end checks. Moisture from within trying to get out closes and wax covering hides existing checks, but the break is already there, waiting to open up when you try a full-diameter piece and it begins to dry. Which is why I would wax the exterior end grain of such a piece after turning, even though I never bother on pieces over which I have excercised end-check control, or monitor it carefully and turn away any that begin as soon as they begin if unwaxed.