I've acquired some very green silver maple, and have major issues with tearout. I did a somewhat green douglas fir blank (chips were cool, not hot), and had some tearout. In both cases, I'm trying to turn to finish, not twice-turn. The tearout appears to be when I'm hitting end-grain Has my technique gone south, or does green wood tend to tear out a bit more than dry? Thanks! Hy
I finish turn wet wood for most of my hollow forms and natural edge bowls. Quite a bit of silver maple.
Silver maple is a soft maple. It is more prone to tear out than say cherry.
Cutting with a sharp gouge bevel riding cutting foot to rim on the outside you should get no noticeable tearout.
Or at worst tiny tear out on the backside of the end grain you can clean up with shear scrap.
A light pull cut almost never leaves tear out.
Usually tear out is worse on the backside of the endgrain.
Maybe the photo shows what I want it to. The cut on the outside is foot to rim.
The cut should be toward the rim. Big arrow. The flute faces the big arrow direction.
However as good as we think are some small component of the cut is upward or toward center. Little arrow.
The cut toward the center is okay on the side grain and as you cut the end grain it is okay because there are supporting fibers behind the first half of the end grain.
Then it switches to not ok as you cut past the center of the grain into the backside of the end grain.
Here the fibers are only supported in the rim direction, in the vertical direction there is only air behind the fibers and they will bend and tear. Also If the cut us up the grain can run into the tool edge and tear if tool edge to too much up it catches.
Flat Scraping with the gouge will work on the face grain and the first half of the end grain then tear out on the back side of the end grain.
You might be able to scrape a harder wood with no noticeable tear out.
I have to be careful roughing wood like soft maple.
My roughing cut does not ride the bevel and I take a 3/4" bite. That 3/4" shaving is attached to the bowl and as it is lifted it pulls fibers with it.
So with the soft woods I have to switch to lighter cute earlier. My early roughing could have 1/4" deep tear out so I need to switch to smoothing cuts when I still have 1/2" of material to remove.
Maybe we could chat in Atlanta.
Al