Ten questions

[John Vaeth]

I agree with the comments about waiting till you are comfortable with tool control and simple hollowing of boxes (watch Ray Key videos) and smaller forms. Start by hollowing through large openings. This allows you to better understand tool presentation. Become familiar with the differences between end grain and face grain hollowing. When you are ready to invest in a full hollowing system, there are many good choices. I like the Trent Bosch system and attended a class at his studio in Colorado that helped enormously. Your choice of bar diameter will depend on how deep you plan to go and how small a hole you would like to hollow through.

 

[Gerald Lawrence]

Randy, in Florida I would be careful putting wood in a plastic bag unless you want it to spalt. A paper bag works well just be careful to use dry wood chips and to change them regularly. Weighing the piece is a good way to tell when it's dry but in your neck of the woods expect it to take about 6 months (or longer) for it to dry. Welcome to the forums! I'm just down the road from you in Tally.
I know Tallahassee is a bit of a drive for you but our AAW club is very active and we broadcast the meetings via zoom. Our next meet is February 6th. I can send you more info if you like.

@Randy Duncan
Bagging with wet chips or in plastic often becomes a mold factory.
Mold discolors the surface and rarely improves wood.

The paper bags make a humidity chamber. Moisture coming off the long grain keeps the endgrain from drying too quickly.
I just use the bags with no chips and swap them for dry bags if the get damp overnight. Damp bags => mold.

Haven’t tried adding dry chips.

Ok y'all always bash the wet chips or adding chips. I have only had a problem when I forgot to open bag for over a week. And that is over almost 20 years turning. I always use chips from what I am turning. Open bag daily , weigh and if bag is too wet change bag. BY the way I did not say but ALWAYS in paper. The lesson is use care and you will not have a problem.

 

[John Vaeth]

"Food safe" is a trigger term for turners! You'll find hundreds of opinions. I am a fan of Bob Flexner's book on wood finishing and tend to agree with his statement that all finishes are safe once FULLY cured. Also, consider how most bowls are used. Mine primarily hold chips, nuts, room temp fruits like bananas and apples. We occasionally use the biggest bowls for salads at large family gatherings - dry salads so guests can dish out their portion and add their own salad dressing. In other words, we don't use them for wet things (like cereal) nor do we ever use sharp utensils in them that could scrape off finish. I feel confident that all of these uses are "safe" regardless of finish. That said, I LIKE the look of Mahoney's Walnut Oil on my turnings so that is often my go-to finish. For breadboards, wood spoons, etc, I use a mineral oil / beeswax finish (35g beeswax melted into 8oz food grade mineral oil) that is safe and very easy to refresh.

 

[Charles Cadenhead]

Ok y'all always bash the wet chips or adding chips. I have only had a problem when I forgot to open bag for over a week.

Yes, but you're not in humid Florida like the OP and us. My truck grows molds, on the outside, if I don't keep it wiped down and out of the shade.

 

[John Vaeth]

When I started turning, I was very anxious to finish turn bowls so I made a lightbulb kiln to speed the drying process. It worked great in North Carolina. When we moved to Oregon, I quickly learned that Oregon timbers dried differently and my first attempts with the kiln failed. Since I found a good resource for logs, I have more rough turned pieces than I can keep up with (especially after buying a coring system) so I just label the bottoms with date and wood type, put a little Anchor Seal on the end grain (or the whole bowl) and let them air dry. I use a moisture meter to determine when they are ready.

 

[Gerald Lawrence]

Yes, but you're not in humid Florida like the OP and us. My truck grows molds, on the outside, if I don't keep it wiped down and out of the shade.

Yes that may be but we do have a river within 5 miles and plenty of swamps. The difference may be in that I have a heat pump in shop so is a controlled atmosphere.

 

[Brian Gustin]

Can also just get a reptile heat lamp, cheap enough on Amazon...

 

[William Rogers]

I just built a box and added insulation around it. Useable space. The thread below shows how I built my kiln and how I control it. Similar to Tom, I start by putting a pan of water in the kiln and I set my controller 90 on and 100 off for the first 7 days. The next uy days it is 100 on and 107 off. (In the winter I refresh the water due to low humidity). The final 7 days it is 107 on and 117 off. No reason for the odd numbers, just what I did the first time. You can develop your own schedule, this works for my kiln. After the final cycle I start weighing the piece until it no longer changes weight. That will take a few days more. Once I take it out of the kiln, I wait a few days and weigh again looking for no or very little change.

I have three light bulbs I can switch one, two or all three. This sets how fast the cycle repeats.

As Brian suggested I will eventually have to switch to the reptile heaters. Right now I can still find incandescent bulbs at the Restore store.

I use to use paper bags and they work, but the kiln is much faster. Also I never had much luck drying walnut in paper bags for some reason, but no problem so far using the kiln.

Homemade Klin

I am thinking of building a homemade kiln. I didn’t see anything in the search. I want to dry long spindle stock. I thinking of using a insulated OSB box and maybe three halogen light bulbs. I would wire a snap disc thermostat ~145 degrees F. An old refrigerator won’t work because of the length...

www.aawforum.org

 

[Wally Crawford]

I started with an old fridge, but I scored a commercial double freezer on FB and use that as a drying box. Cut a 4" hole low on one side and a 4" hole high on the opposite side. I use a 750W space heater with a thermostat that keeps me between 100* and 102*. My set up will hold 35-50 bowls if I fill it, which seldom happens and turn over is 6-8 weeks depending on species and moisture content. I sometimes get a little cracking, but seldom, and I think I have a handle on that to reduce it.

 

[Charles Cadenhead]

The difference may be in that I have a heat pump in shop so is a controlled atmosphere.

A climate controlled shop sounds so nice!

 

[William Rogers]

I made a homemade kiln. a 12” rough bowl takes about a month to dry. Paper bags work, but take much longer. I have not had good luck with walnut drying in a bag, but in a kiln walnut dries fine.

 

[john lucas]

I looked into pentacle years ago. It was expensive and apparently they have problems with finishes sticking to it so I passed it up. I just spent more time learning to work with green wood.

 

[Randy Anderson]

I keep it simple. Twice turned traditional bowls - seal and set on a shelf till dry. Once turned natural/live edge bowls and small hollow forms I put in a brown paper grocery bag and check every few days. I built a small drying box with lamp, fan etc years ago but didn't find it any better than what I do now plus, the box limited how many items I could keep going.

 

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Artificial info spammer I think.

 

[Randy Anderson]

Leo, I assume you're meaning that this post and the one on hollowing tools (and others) are AI generated? If so, never seen that before and wonder to what end it would be. All of the posts are from yesterday, basic questions, and no followup responses that I see.

 

[Alan Weinberg]

So glad you have many more chucks than me.

save this thread to show the wife when you buy number 16–show her that there are people with more than twice as many!

 

[Alan Weinberg]

Artificial info spammer I think.

What’s the purpose though? He registered last June and now it’s more than 6 months later. Weird that he hasn’t come back to read answers, though.

 

[Kent Reisdorph]

I think he's just a guy that signed up 6 months ago and is now starting to turn.

 

[Brian Gustin]

Agree with Leo, Sounds a lot like things folks would be asking on AI chatbots like Bing, and not getting quality responses, chatbots can set up things like this and gather responses - even though many of these questions would have already been answered (some many times before) , but that was my first impression as well on the sudden influx of posts and no responses. (and some sound suspiciously word for word like questions others have posted in the past) I keep thinking sooner or later folks will catch on and let the threads die.

 

[Brian Gustin]

Agree with Leo- Another little point I wonder about is, he stopped at exactly 10 posts... isn't that the minimum to get sufficient privileges to post in classifieds or something?

AI Bot: sign up as person.... wait 6-8 months to get lost in the crowd.... do enough posts, etc to gain member privileges for other forum sections..... wait another 6-8 months... make a few posts in obscure forums.... wait 6-8 months for them to get buried (preferrably to page 2 where almost no one goes).... then go in and edit your signature and website with the URL you're trying to boost in SEO rankings (so SEO Bots will pick up referral links from a highly ranked website) I often see it on a forum that I ran (and still have a hand in but turned over day to day to someone else) but he and I are both a little bit Geek-Ish and can usually catch up those "Bots" before they get too far into that process (usually after they make their minimal postings and then stop and never come back to respond) .....

 

[John Vaeth]

I created a light bulb kiln following most of the suggestions Sam Angelo provided in a good YouTube video from a few years ago (

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z09xUNGTcg4
). It is important to have a method to control both humidity and temperature. The Ductstat controller he mentioned works well - it shuts the light bulb off when the box exceeds a certain temperature. The humidity sensor lets you know how the humidity has changed over the last 24 hours. Based on that, I open or close vents as needed. I also added a small computer fan (about $7 on Amazon) to keep the air moving inside. Bottom line is that the box works well but it takes some practice to get all the parameters right for a specific timber. Honestly, I rarely use it now. The volume of my rough turnings now exceed my capacity for finish turnings so I always have air dried bowls sitting on a shelf ready to turn.

 

[Kent Reisdorph]

Good point, Brian. I'm starting to lean Leo's way.

 

[Lance Mirrer]

Would be a shame if this was only a spammer. I learned something here.

 

[Alan Weinberg]

at least he/it generated some good discussions.

 

[Greg Norman]

AI is here again.

I completely agree. The syntax of the first couple made me suspicious and that grew with each new post. It's like with machine translation when someone is pretending to speak english, something just seems fishy.

 

[Emiliano Achaval]

Would be a shame if this was only a spammer. I learned something here.

Everyone here has been screened, not sure why someone would think that.

 

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Everyone here has been screened, not sure why someone would think that.

Someone asleep at the wheel it seems to me

 

[Brian Gustin]

Someone asleep at the wheel it seems to me

Yup, although , granted, AI bots can pass basic human screening (including calling them at their phone number, even!) One might question if creating an AI bot with those capabilities was really worth while for the person using it... And if it WAS worthwhile, one might wonder "for what?"

 

[robo hippy]

I know many would soak bowls in denatured alcohol, but haven't heard much about it in a while. I used the LDD soak, equal parts liquid hand dishwashing detergent and water. That was developed by the late great Ron Kent over in Hawaii. It was for dealing with the Pine that he was turning which would gum up any abrasives. The LDD makes woods like that, and pretty much any wood sand out a lot easier. I haven't used it in a while. I did a test once with my once turned bowls. The 2 different approaches made no difference in drying time or warping. The ones soaked in DNA were harder to sand out.

robo hippy

 

[Bill Boehme]

OK, all of you AI experts, let’s knock off the idle speculation. The OP is a real person, a beginner who doesn’t know where to begin, an AAW member, a member of the Emerald Coast Woodturning Guild, and obviously not up to speed on forum etiquette.

I would encourage him to help us help him by telling us where he is in his woodturning journey and focusing his questions a bit to get better answers. Answering questions takes a lot of time and thought and I can appreciate the fact that ten questions in a little more than an hour can be rather off-putting. Emiliano and I work our asses off to keep this ship on course an we don’t appreciate comments that we aren’t doing our job.

I’m not very enthused about editing threads and deleting posts, but instead of cleaning up ten piles of stuff I’ve raked it all into one big pile. Coffee break is over, let’s get back to work.

 

[Will Armstrong]

Especially since you are new to this, stick with simple. Walnut oil is a good finish regardless of your experience.

Reading this leads me to a question I have been thinking about for a while. Will walnut oil cause problems for somebody with a nut allergy after it dries?

Tree nut allergies are fairly common and for that reason I would suggest not using Walnut oil. I fully understand the fact that once cured it is no long reactive but... as a person with tree nut allergies I would prefer to not take the chance.
I believe the present consensus is that all finishes are food save once fully cured(30 days). Many wiping oils such as Tung oil and Danish oil are documented by the manufacturer as being food safe after curing. this is my preference.

 

[Alan Weinberg]

The SuperNova 2 is the one I've bought from them.

But now $200.

 

[hockenbery]

Tree nut allergies are fairly common and for that reason I would suggest not using Walnut oil. I fully understand the fact that once cured it is no long reactive but... as a person with tree nut allergies I would prefer to not take the chance.
I believe the present consensus is that all finishes are food save once fully cured(30 days). Many wiping oils such as Tung oil and Danish oil are documented by the manufacturer as being food safe after curing. this is my preference.

I assume you avoid tung oil products too.

 

[Roger Wiegand]

Tree nut allergies are fairly common and for that reason I would suggest not using Walnut oil. I fully understand the fact that once cured it is no long reactive but... as a person with tree nut allergies I would prefer to not take the chance.
I believe the present consensus is that all finishes are food save once fully cured(30 days). Many wiping oils such as Tung oil and Danish oil are documented by the manufacturer as being food safe after curing. this is my preference.

Note that tung is also a tree nut, and while flax (from which linseed oil is made) is regarded as an edible seed there are also people allergic to it. I don’t think you can win at this game. I’ve seen reports of allergies to teflon, you don’t get a lot more inert than that.

Heat treatment and filtration to remove proteins is quite effective, the drying and polymerization of the oils will further trap and render inaccessible any antigens.

I’ve never seen a report of an allergic reaction from handling or to food served from a bowl finished with pure walnut, tung, or linseed oil. Has anyone else?

 

[Will Armstrong]

I assume you avoid tung oil products too.

I have been using Tung oil for decades, and long before I even realized it was made from tree nuts or seeds. I have had no reactions to it. My "tree nut" allergies are on a spectrum in that I eat almonds everyday, can tolerate hazelnuts but have to strictly avoid walnuts. Many of the trees in the typical "tree nut" category are not even related to each other.

I have never seen a report of an allergic reaction from handling or to food served from a bowl finished with pure walnut, tung, or linseed oil. Has anyone else?

I also have never seen any evidence of reactions, in agreement with Roger.

 

[hockenbery]

Many of the trees in the typical "tree nut" category are not even related to each other.

And the famous peanut isn’t a nut

 

[Darryl Fective]

Note that tung is also a tree nut, and while flax (from which linseed oil is made) is regarded as an edible seed there are also people allergic to it. I don’t think you can win at this game. I’ve seen reports of allergies to teflon, you don’t get a lot more inert than that.

Heat treatment and filtration to remove proteins is quite effective, the drying and polymerization of the oils will further trap and render inaccessible any antigens.

I’ve never seen a report of an allergic reaction from handling or to food served from a bowl finished with pure walnut, tung, or linseed oil. Has anyone else?

I would guess if anyone is really that allergic, they're going to want to eat from metal or plastic bowls anyway.

 

[Doug Freeman]

1. anyone used Woodcut tool Max4 and if so, what is your impression?

I have the 2 blade bowlsaver. I like it, wish I had the 3 blade version. I have a McNaughton now also but have not used it enough yet. The Woodcut is easier to use.

2. i am new to hollowing and looking for recommendations for which brand of tools to buy??

Start with defining the sizes/ext off tool rest you want, as this defines the boring bar dia/length. Larger/deeper systems will be captured, articulated systems (like Elbo, Bosch limited in depth). Where do you want to stand, at the work opening (my preference) or at the end of a handle. Cost - some systems require straight and bent bars - Jamieson (what I use) uses swivel ends to add bar shape flexibility to each dia bar, lowering cost. Captured, like the Jamieson, require more storage space.

3. how do you set up a drying box and due they really work?

I use a cardboard box with a 400 watt heater. Only used to dry finishes, not wood. Works great. Wood drying requires moisture control, not worth the hassle. Kraft paper bags work well to dry turnings.

4. what is the best way to dry green turned wood?

Kraft paper bags and weight scale

5. i am new to turning, what finish should be used for salad bowl?

One of the walnut oils - I use Mahoney’s

6. what is the best finish to use on red cedar bowl that will not be used for food grade?

Too many options. Finishing is a separate skill set. Usage, desired “look” and gloss, finish application method, dry time, etc must be considered.

7. i am new to turning and need advise on which hollowing system to buy (like tge ELBO 2 hollowing system or similar)?

See #2

8. tried to use Pentacryl several times without success, anyone know the secret to use?

Never tried it, from research I’ve done, don’t use it.

9. how do you fill hairline cracks without staining wood? have used thin CA glue but have trouble getting into hairline cracks.

Thin CA will migrate with capillary action.

10. new to turning with limited budget, what are the best value chucks that will last?

Nova G3, but I dont like the overall jaw selection. My favorite is Oneway stronghold or talon with profiled tower jaws.

 

[Odie]

4. what is the best way to dry green turned wood?

5. i am new to turning, what finish should be used for salad bowl?

9. how do you fill hairline cracks without staining wood? have used thin CA glue but have trouble getting into hairline cracks.

4. Most turners try to speed up the drying process, but I've found the best way to dry once-turned bowls, is to slow it down. In essence....time is your friend, pardner! After roughing, coat the entire bowl with anchorseal to slow it down even further. The slower it dries, the more successful the process will be. The only way to make this method work for you, is to have plenty of roughed bowls in the drying process at a time. That way, you always have a bowl you can finish turn, while you wait.

5. There are a number of finishes that will be acceptable, but I use Watco Danish oil natural for nearly everything else, so I use it for salad bowls, too. After it's fully cured, it becomes non-toxic. A coating of lemon oil wax is used after that.

9. I've found the best way to fill minor cracks is to mix 2-part epoxy with sanding dust collected directly from the cracked bowl, or the same wood species. Using the epoxy means you have to wait 24hrs to proceed, but if you have plenty of other work ready to go on the lathe, it's only a minor inconvenience. I have collected sanding dust from many species of wood that I've turned previously, and probably have 30-40 vials of dust on hand. (I use small containers previously used for vitamins and supplements for collecting sanding dust.....don't throw them away! )

-o-

 

[Odie]

9. I've found the best way to fill minor cracks is to mix 2-part epoxy with sanding dust collected directly from the cracked bowl, or the same wood species. Using the epoxy means you have to wait 24hrs to proceed, but if you have plenty of other work ready to go on the lathe, it's only a minor inconvenience. I have collected sanding dust from many species of wood that I've turned previously, and probably have 30-40 vials of dust on hand. (I use small containers previously used for vitamins and supplements for collecting sanding dust.....don't throw them away! )

Edit with additional information:

To get the epoxy mixed with sanding dust to penetrate into cracks, I use finger cots. Get some epoxy on the cot, and push it into the crack.....it's easy and simple to do. In order to avoid getting epoxy all over everything but the crack itself, surround the crack with cloth hockey tape. Hockey tape does not stick to the epoxy repair after it's dry, and that's an important consideration. After applying the epoxy mix, cover the whole thing with another strip of hockey tape....that way it is not subject to gravity while it sets up.

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-o-