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southwest wood

Jeff Jilg

Jeff Jilg

Joined
Apr 9, 2004
Messages
1,287
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Location
Austin, TX
Website
www.woodturner.org
Sometimes despite all your best efforts, wood does not want to cooperate. I salvaged a truckload of pecan about 3 weeks ago and waxed it immediately then stored it in the garage.

Then I roughed 4 pieces, waxed them and went on a 10 day trip. Those are fine. The unroughed blanks are starting to crack big time. Probably due to the kiln-like effects of my garage in the start of summer. :mad:

This pecan was wanting to crack before I left and now it is starting to accomplish its mission. The wood was salvaged the next day after it was cut. Sometimes it just doesn't work out. There must have been a bunch of stress in this tree.
 
I was given several hundred board feet of pecan cut 4/4 from a large old tree destroyed in Hurricane Opal more than a decade ago. It had been stickered in a barn all those years. Some was warped pretty bad and a few cracks, but little sign of checking.

I realize that this is a different situation than yours, but there is hope for pecan. I used some for some flat work (jewelry boxes mostly) and the biggest problem was that it is so hard that it dulled tools quickly. It especially was tough on the planer, probably could have sent a concrete slab through there and not dulled the blades as bad. Also have turned a lot of it into platters and such, spend as much time sharpening tools as cutting. Good luck with yours!
 
My experience with Pecan leads me to believe that it's a wood that likes to move around.

Had a buddy who helped build a new building for a church addition. They cut down a huge Pecan with the caveat that they make flooring for the church out of it.

So my friend took one whole Saturday quartering this thing and all summer milling it into rough blanks for the moulder. Even though he stickered it and tied it down, many of those blanks moved so badly that they looked like snakes. I had to cut a lot of that stuff into shorter pieces or they wouldn't even go through the moulder.
 
Soak it or swap it?

Here is a great opportunity to see if soaking blanks in alcohol will dry the pecan or just disinfect them as they crack. I have a list of questions for you but not enough time to check my spelling. The only pecan I have obtained was from Sean Troy when I visited him a couple years ago. I had the wood in the back of the truck when I visited Wally Dickerman and he said he tried pecan but the rough out self-destructed. Some where I have pictures of the 4 bowls I turned from the log. I don't have time to look for them but the bowls turned and finished great.

I cored a bowl from each half and roughed the blanks thinner than the 10% rule. Using the alcohol drying process appears to have reduced the warping and cracking issues. But I only tried it on a pecan log that was checked and exposed to sun and wind while being hauled back to Longview, WA. It might work differently on fresh wood than has not been abused.

.If you want to get rid of some pecan we can swap some wood.

Dave Smith

Working on the 2007 demonstrating application in Longview, WA.
 
Thanks for the info. Also thanks for the offer Dave. Once the blanks get roughed out into bowl shapes or hollowed vase shapes this wood will be okay. The problem is getting the wood to that point (in my copious spare time).
 
Try this.

Have you sticked the wood so air can circulate around the entire blank. I have found that blanks or short log pieces crack less when air can reach all sides.

If the pieces are in log form try standing them on end. I was going to do some research on this but every time I got a roundtuit I spent it on something else. I took some apple and holly limbs out of my shed that were stored standing up with the ends sealed and there has been little or no cracking when I moved them to make room for too much quarter sawn white oak I had sawn 2 weeks ago.

I can't make it to the symposium this year so perhaps we will meet again in Portland, OR next year.

Dave Smith

Doing flat work to pay the bills in Longview, WA.
 
Yes, they are all stickered. I cut them into bowl and vase shapes (octagons) in the hopes of reducing some of the stress. They are all re-waxed too. The problem is heat and crack-prone wood. I hope someone likes the final pieces when these get done!
 
Gosh this reminds me of the spalted pecan bowl I was trying to rough out the other day....

I had gotten the outside almost perfect. But I guess it was still too wet, because the darn thing kept cracking after I'd get it sanded down and all the cracks sealed up with CA glue.

I'd just be ready to pull it off and turn it around to do the inside, and I hear it...

tick. ping. crack! 🙁

@#$%% rassafrasssin.. thing..

Apply the CA glue and sawdust. Let dry. Sand it all off smooth. Start unchucking it....

tick. ping! crack!

:mad: @#$@#% rassafrassing stupid thing!

Finally I gave up and reversed it anyway. Figured if I got the inside roughed out, it would relieve the tension and stop cracking so much.. 🙄

Wouldn't you know it. I had a minor catch and the darn foot popped off, and the bowl bounced off the ways, and hopped it's way across the shop. 😱

I re-turned it rough and popped some lacquer on it to keep it from drying so fast.
So now it sits in an even more rough state on the bench. Maybe I'll get a chance to finish working on it tomorrow.
 
Jeff Jilg said:
Sometimes despite all your best efforts, wood does not want to cooperate. I salvaged a truckload of pecan about 3 weeks ago and waxed it immediately then stored it in the garage.
Click to expand...

Ecclesiastes 9:11

Then I roughed 4 pieces, waxed them and went on a 10 day trip. Those are fine. The unroughed blanks are starting to crack big time. Probably due to the kiln-like effects of my garage in the start of summer. :mad:
Click to expand...

You said it. Might want to consider that open shade business. Swamp cooler, if they still made 'em would really make nice conditions. Of course you hurt your case by shortening them, making it easier for water to get out. If you slabbed, virtually suicide. No way to stop radial checks. It's the dance between spalt and split, and I find a preturned piece a better partner.

This pecan was wanting to crack before I left and now it is starting to accomplish its mission. The wood was salvaged the next day after it was cut. Sometimes it just doesn't work out. There must have been a bunch of stress in this tree.
Click to expand...

In an urban tree, you bet. That's one reason why they don't harvest timber on elm street. People want things their way, and prune 'em, or let them spread to seek light rather than climb, which is why you see all the split trunks on urban trees and seldom in the forest.
 
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