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Can Someone Help me out ( LDD Bowl Drying issues )

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So I have been doing the LDD bowl drying method for a few weeks now with pretty great success until recently...

I decided to get the big bottles of Great Value Brand Dish-washing Liquid so I could feel up a large container and soak more bowls at once. WELL the outcome was I lost all 8 Maple bowls that were in the batch. Can someone please explain what has happened? Once the bowls were pulled from the mix, I washed them off but the soap as completely altered the maple. I have attached two images showing what this looks like.

I attempted one last bowl with Ash and the this what I will call soap layer wasn't there but it changed the color of the Ash completely. Turning it green and then once sanded away, the wood is gray.

I do the once turned bowl method (inspired by Reed Gray) and debated doing the twice turned method now but I would still like to know if ANYONE has any idea what happened or whats going on with the mix

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I'm new so I cannot offer much advice. I had a kiln dry soft maple that appeared to be consistent in color. I turned it and sanded it, but then I noticed gray spot on both ends of the bowl. Is this what you are seeing as well?

BTW, I use denatured alcohol soaking for drying bowls, did not notice discoloring issues and I've used maple before. This was my first experience with discoloration.

IMG_0314.JPG IMG_0315.JPG
 
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I have tried every drying method I have heard about over the last 25 years. (Micro wave, PEG, boiling in various liquids, soaking, kiln, vacuum kiln). They don't work. I rough turn green wood with uniform wall thickness from 3/4" to 1 1/2", depending on bowl diameter, 10% rule. Coat it with Anchorseal, weigh it, put a slip of paper inside with the date and the weight. Weigh it every month and when the weight is the same for two months it's dry. Return it and finish.
 

odie

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I have tried every drying method I have heard about over the last 25 years. (Micro wave, PEG, boiling in various liquids, soaking, kiln, vacuum kiln). They don't work. I rough turn green wood with uniform wall thickness from 3/4" to 1 1/2", depending on bowl diameter, 10% rule. Coat it with Anchorseal, weigh it, put a slip of paper inside with the date and the weight. Weigh it every month and when the weight is the same for two months it's dry. Return it and finish.

Right, Paul.....:D

Other turners have gone to extremes, trying to figure out how to quickly season a roughed bowl......and, the results have always been the same. It's never with the same success rate as doing it by sealing, and then periodically weighing.....until that point where the weight stabilizes. To my thinking, these other turners need to just get used to the time element involved, and they will have success. It is what it is.....and, there is no getting around that. ;)

-----odie-----
 
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With the soap, you need clear, light tan/brown, or yellow. The green and blue will tint the wood. The black flecks are metal stains. Most of them come from metal powder on your hands and tools after you sharpen. I always have piles of wet shavings that I use to wipe off the tools and my hands after sharpening. concentrated lemon juice will remove the metal stains in seconds if you use it when they are fresh. If it sits over night or till dry, the lemon will bleach the wood. Lime does not work, no idea why. The ONLY thing the soap soak does is to greatly ease the sanding process, It makes a huge difference in how easy things are to sand out after they are dry. I have tried thinned mixes, and just spraying, but the mix needs to be 50/50 for the best results. The soak does nothing to aid drying or prevent cracking and warping. The bowls need to be completely submerged. If you use rocks, or any thing other than stainless steel to weight them down, this will add dark colors to the wood. If they are not submerged all the way, and just rolling them over a few times does not do it, you will get soap lines, which do not sand out. I do wrap the rims in plastic stretch film. With maple, this is a problem because it will mold under the plastic. My guess is the high sugar content of the maple is the reason. Most of the time, this is not a problem as maple is pretty easy to dry, especially if you make sure to round over the rims. If you soak some thing like black walnut in the soap mix, every thing else you put in after will be much darker when it comes out. When I put Pacific Madrone in it, the soap mix turns a nice purple/red color. I did limited DNA soaks. It did seem to pull some color out of the madrone. Light colored woods won't do much to the soap or DNA, but both seem to pull some color out of other woods, and that in turn will soak into what ever you put in next.

Hope this helps explain better...

robo hippy
 
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@robo hippy - This mix is split 50/50 and the soap is clear, thats what I am confused on what caused this. If you look at the first picture, you can see the layer where I sanded away. Why did this certain mix completely gray the maple and then on top of that add a layer of dried soap?

Im really considering giving DNA a try now but just trying to save on some money. ;)
 
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Hello Andrew, I agree with Odie and Paul on green bowls. I was given several nice size green maple logs last month and I rough turned them and left them about 1 1/2 " thick. The green bowls have been drying now for about 3 or 4 weeks and I have no cracks just a little warping which is natural for green bowls. (at least maple that is). Like other turners have done, I got some index cards that I'll keep records on all my bowls green or kiln dried and record the weight, MC, bowl number and other information .
I Have a thread titled "First Bowl" and Odie showed on one of his replies in that thread a great record system that he uses on all his work using index cards. After I have roughed a green I just use a sharpie to date the bowl and store it, record it each month and to dry natural....Happy turning and welcome to the forum.
 
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I have tried a few of these “Too Good To Be True” manners of bowl drying, yes the dishwashing soap as well, what a mess, and have found my bowl drying in the Brown Paper Bag too be the best way for me with a near Guaranteed good outcome every time, no mess no dangerous chemicals or costly setups required.

Just a freshly rough turned bowl from wood without splits in them and stuck into a (Craft) Brown Paper Bag, nothing else added, set in a cool draft free place and just checked a couple of times on the first week or two, just to make sure that if any fungus/mildew grows on it I wipe it off with a dry paper towel and stick it in a other dry bag again.

The bags I use over and over, fungus is killed when it gets dry, and preventing mildew and fungus from growing takes just that, drying, the spores are everywhere and will grew when conditions are right, wet and warm.

This is a picture of dried White Ash bowls taken out of the paper bags to finish drying some more.
 

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You can always spend some time cutting and processing a number of wood blanks
and bowl blanks. If you turn a number of green bowls and put them up to dry you will
end up with a good supply of wood turning projects over time. You can build up a pretty
good inventory of wood if you process a few pick-up loads of wood each year. Sooner or
later you usually end up with more wood then you have time to turn.
 
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If the soap was clear or light colored, then my guess would be that the wood molded. Maple does that a lot if you don't watch it. Any moisture with the sugars is great for mold to grow on. Up on a wire rack for me.

For once turned bowls, the DNA soak does nothing except make the wood harder to sand out. No idea why it does this. No difference in drying time, warping, or cracking. With twice turned bowls, I don't know since I don't do them. I don't think the LDD soak was ever said to aid in the drying process. Ron Kent in Hawaii started using it on Norfolk Island Pine to combat all the pitch in that wood and the mess it made of your abrasives.

The brown bag method works, but with the quantity of bowls I used to do, it just isn't practical. Best variation on that I heard of was from Christian Burshard who put madrone pieces in a paper bag, then put that inside a plastic bag. Change out the paper bag every day. Bags can be reused when they dry again.

Dry too fast and you get cracks. Dry too slow and you get mold.

robo hippy
 
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You could try spalting the bowl blanks, there are pure strains available or you can bury the
bowl blanks in damp soil with spalted wood pieces to get the bowl blanks inoculated with the spores.
There are a number of articles and books that have been written explaining the process.
On a smaller scale you can use a plastic garbage bag with soil and wood pieces, add a little water
and you have a perfect environment for the spalting mold spores to grow into the blank.

Adding a little bleach to your detergent/water solution will help kill the mold spores from growing
on your wood bowl blanks. Your freshly cut and soaked wood is a perfect growing/feeding opportunity
for molds and bacteria. Killing these little bugs is usually done in curing/drying ovens in the lumber
industry. Some of the commercial operations are now using microwave ovens to dry lumber with.
When harvesting and processing your personal wood reserves for turning, you will need to take
measures to protect the wood you don't want discolored by mold and bacteria. You have several
options to sterilize your wood, heat and chemicals are the most common.
 
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I have tried every drying method I have heard about over the last 25 years. (Micro wave, PEG, boiling in various liquids, soaking, kiln, vacuum kiln). They don't work. I rough turn green wood with uniform wall thickness from 3/4" to 1 1/2", depending on bowl diameter, 10% rule. Coat it with Anchorseal, weigh it, put a slip of paper inside with the date and the weight. Weigh it every month and when the weight is the same for two months it's dry. Return it and finish.

This is the only method that works for me - and I keep trying to push it to extremes.
The only other thing to add is: dry the bowls as SLOOOOOWLY as possible.
- cool areas
- limited air flow
- leave it for a LONG time.

Thats not 100% guaranteed, but has a good success ratio.
If you are impatience, just turn more bowls and add to the assembly line.
 

odie

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One notation about mold/mildew that I've noticed, is it usually starts at around 18-20% MC. Wetter than that, and it doesn't occur......dryer than that, and it doesn't occur either. I'm not sure if my particular climate has anything to do with it, but that's my findings.....o_O

-----odie-----
 
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Odie the fungus/mildew whatever you call it, dies off if the moisture is lower than 20% for what studies have concluded, though how wet it can be I don’t know, the thing is though that the airborne spores land on everything and with wood the inside might well be more than say 30%, but the outside isn’t as wet and the Fungus will start to grow on the outside and moving in as it is able to stay alive, even under applied wood sealer or in a paper or plastic bags.

Getting that % point down to below 20% as quick as possible without having the wood split is what we would like to do, as prolonging that high moisture contend gives the fungus time to do more rotting eating the wood and discolouring it.

It is one of the reason’s I don’t seal the rough turned pieces but stick them in a paper bag, it works for me and dries the wood faster than having it sealed with anchor seal or other, I have tried that and it was not an improvement for me.

Here are two pictures of a bunch of Applewood rough outs, the first have all been dried in brown paper bags, the next picture is of two more of that batch and the 5 pieces I had sealed and left to dry that way, they still where not dry at that point, while all the others were, and of course later I had to get rid of all that wax/grease.

dry Apple bowls.jpg 5 sealed Apple bowls.jpg
 
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I have been using pentacryl. Just rub or brush it on. I believe that it is liquid plastic that doesn't ever dry out. At least that's the best I can figure. I've set it out on metal and plastic to see if it had anything to evaporate or cure off and it seems not, so ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Then I turn the dried blank.

Glen Lucas puts something on his first turning of bowls that appears to look like Gesso and then stacks them for drying with little other than sticks between the stacked blanks. I have not got even a tiny clue what he uses.
 
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I have been using pentacryl. Just rub or brush it on. I believe that it is liquid plastic that doesn't ever dry out. At least that's the best I can figure. I've set it out on metal and plastic to see if it had anything to evaporate or cure off and it seems not, so ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Then I turn the dried blank.

Glen Lucas puts something on his first turning of bowls that appears to look like Gesso and then stacks them for drying with little other than sticks between the stacked blanks. I have not got even a tiny clue what he uses.


Personally, my experience with Pentacryl was poor. Expensive, multiple applications, and worst, a waxy layer to sand off. So I stopped using it.

As for drying methods, there are SO many variables. climate, location, air flow, wood species etc. so you need to experiment with what works for your needs.
IMO - there is no one universal solution.

Just try to be systematic in your search for solutions. Non will be perfect, but look for higher ratios of success.

and work your way up incrementally.
I.e. don't jump to big bowls in a hurry.
 

Bill Boehme

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Glen Lucas puts something on his first turning of bowls that appears to look like Gesso and then stacks them for drying with little other than sticks between the stacked blanks. I have not got even a tiny clue what he uses.

Sounds like it might be Anchorseal.

I tried Pentacryl about fifteen years ago ... never again.:(
 

Bill Boehme

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Yup the same experience here Bill, still have a partial container of it sitting, I don’t know why I haven’t thrown it out yet :confused:

Same here. I recently found that I still have a partial bottle. It would be cruel to give it to an unsuspecting new turner and just as bad to send it to a landfill. :D
 
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Take a hard look at http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/boiling-green-wood.html. While I have no idea if large hollow-forms are more or less vulnerable, I can tell you this: Since starting the boiling routine (plain water) I haven't had one loss - best guess is that is about 30-hollowforms ago. I go from green (log slinging water) to 6% before I begin secondary turning. The only wood I don't boil is mesquite - it's super stable.
You might also go to the Lignomat website and study Gene Wengerts: http://www.lignomatusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DryingLumber.pdf. There are some datapoints there that are the same for both woodturners as well as commercial lumber mills.
Sometimes guys seem to expect some process can influence warping - I have never found that to be so. A 20" dia walnut hollowform will go from round to 1.5" greater along the grain - if you don't allow for that in you thickness planning, I think the best term is SOL.
Lastly and as Odie said in an earlier comment, don't get in a hurry. As per Dr, Wengert's paper, go slow until you get to 20%MC - after that you can be more aggressive.
 
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One additional comment: Steven Russell suggest boiling for an hour per inch - as my roughs can be less that perfect, I generally boil for 2-hours. I then let the water cool overnight and pull the soaked piece, put it into a sealed cardboard box (can find a large enough grocery bag) and let it go for 3-5 months with a small computer fan pulling the air out of the interior and circulating the moist air inside the box - don't have the air blowing into the piece. It is also in a de-humidified room - summers can be sticky here in Dallas.

The amazing, and counter-intuitive, thing is: the wood dries quicker (dry defined as 6%-MC). And while the surface may be between dull and yukkie, when you cut 1/16 or more below the surface, it's like it was.

When you think about it, the trunk of a large tree has serious tonnage pressing down and serious forces with even a small breeze - the limbs sticking out at angles have serious stress - try extending your arm holding a few pounds - then imagine doing that a few decades. The boiling seems to mitigate some of those internal stresses.

My goal for the last ten-years has always been to out-smart the log - every time I think I'm getting there I get my "come-uppins"
 
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Boiling, microwaving, steeming, all have some success. The heat breaks down the lignin which makes the wood more mailable. That reduces the cracking. However, I suspect, only to a point.

The piece in your aviator would shrink considerably in cross section.
But turned as end grain, might crack. I've tried large end grains like that, but without success.
I've tried to mimic the Moultroups solutions, but no luck. Yet....
 
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So, from the looks of what I have seen here, I would be better off drying my roughed, Anchor sealed blanks in the unheated garage rather than in the house basement in the vicinity of the gas furnace. Actually, I mean to pose this as a question of advice here.
  1. Unheated Midwest garage?
  2. Moderately heated basement?
The question comes up at this point, because in our new home, I have more basement storage available that I previously did. I also alternate between the brown paper bags and the Anchor Seal.
 
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Your furnace room will be the driest area in your basement, the other variable is how
high of humidity you keep your house at in the winter months.
You could also look at your furnace room as being a small kiln drying room.
If you monitor the humidity in the different areas of your basement you can
move the wood to the areas best suited for the blanks based on moisture content.
 

Bill Boehme

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So, from the looks of what I have seen here, I would be better off drying my roughed, Anchor sealed blanks in the unheated garage rather than in the house basement in the vicinity of the gas furnace. Actually, I mean to pose this as a question of advice here.
  1. Unheated Midwest garage?
  2. Moderately heated basement?
The question comes up at this point, because in our new home, I have more basement storage available that I previously did. I also alternate between the brown paper bags and the Anchor Seal.

We don't have a basement and our garage isn't in the Midwest, but I can say what I do. I just have them in a big pile in the garage after I rough them and coat them with Anchorseal. We have an air conditioner in the garage that we use most of the year and a couple Vornado portable electric heaters that we use during winter so most of the time the temperature ranges between 60° and 80°. Our humidity seems high, but it's probably about average and it's nothing compared to the humidity in Houston where I grew up.

I was in Kansas for a couple years when I was in the Army and the humidity was extremely low and I imagine that would present a big problem when you don't want to dry wood too fast.
 
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So, from the looks of what I have seen here, I would be better off drying my roughed, Anchor sealed blanks in the unheated garage rather than in the house basement in the vicinity of the gas furnace. Actually, I mean to pose this as a question of advice here.
  1. Unheated Midwest garage?
  2. Moderately heated basement?
The question comes up at this point, because in our new home, I have more basement storage available that I previously did. I also alternate between the brown paper bags and the Anchor Seal.

I would and did/do use the basement to dry my rough outs in the brown paper bags, not in the furnace room though, too much heat and air movement , but on the floor where there is basically no air movement.

I rather have a slower drying environment that is basically stable throughout the year unlike what a garage would be.
 

Emiliano Achaval

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I also agree with Paul and Odie. I found that trying to find the magic solution is a waste of time and money. I dont even coat my bowls, up on a shelve they go, when I'm ready, or if a customer picks it, I finish it. I have a better than 90 % successful rate... No substitute for patience...
 

Bill Boehme

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I also agree with Paul and Odie. I found that trying to find the magic solution is a waste of time and money. I dont even coat my bowls, up on a shelve they go, when I'm ready, or if a customer picks it, I finish it. I have a better than 90 % successful rate... No substitute for patience...

I think that being in a hurry and wanting instant drying is a normal phase that every new turner goes through. I think it was Paul who mentioned PEG earlier. Coincidentally, I stumbled across a box containing two blocks of PEG1000 that I bought many years ago and never used. The interesting thing is that those blocks are now just a leaky plastic bag of greasy mush. What a nasty mess.
 

john lucas

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Drying is about 2 things. heat and air movement. The paper sacks work wonders for me. It keeps the air movement down and allows just enough moisture to escape to properly slow down the drying. I still coat the end grains with sealer. Maybe that's a habit thing. I also never leave a sharp edge on roughed out work. That sharp edge willl try to lose moisture faster and that's where a lot of my cracks start. I now store my green wood in a shed that has water flowing through it when it rains. I keep a dehumidifier in there but we are talking a serious amount of water when it rains. This has actually worked to my advantage in that i haven't lost a piece yet. I do have to bring my dry wood into the shop and let it sit for a week or more to get the wood down to the proper level. It comes out of my shed around 14% IN the shop it will get down to 11% and sometimes lower.
 
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I have tried every drying method I have heard about over the last 25 years. (Micro wave, PEG, boiling in various liquids, soaking, kiln, vacuum kiln). They don't work. I rough turn green wood with uniform wall thickness from 3/4" to 1 1/2", depending on bowl diameter, 10% rule. Coat it with Anchorseal, weigh it, put a slip of paper inside with the date and the weight. Weigh it every month and when the weight is the same for two months it's dry. Return it and finish.
Hi Paul- My name is Bill Campbell. Im a newbie to wood turning (about a year) and I LOVE the hobby. I have only tried one method which is turning a sweetgum bowl to about 1" as well as attempting an oak bark edged bowl to the same. The sweetgum was coated with pentacryl 5-6x and then stuck in a paperbag. I took it out after a month to remove the faceplate and noticed decent sized cracks in the top edge as well as the bottom. Wasted :( I had also put shavings in the bag. I did the same method with the oak sans pentacryl. same result. You mentioned "Coat it with Anchorseal, weigh it, put a slip of paper inside with the date and the weight. Weigh it every month and when the weight is the same for two months it's dry" Are you saying this method works for you consistently? I have large pieces of sweetgum and about 6 nice size oak logs which Id like to rough turn but I dont want them wasted. Thank you.
 

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I turn mostly green wood
I do a demo on turning green wood it is 3 parts
Overview slides-rough turn a green wood for drying - return a dried bowl

Keep at it you will have success
I would not leave a face plate on for drying
The wood has to move or crack

The key to successful drying are even wall thickness and flowing curves - both difficult to acheive on your first bowl

You might get some tips any maybe we what kept your bowls from moving from the slide
link to overview slides

http://aaw.hockenbery.net/WORKING WITH green wood-HOcompressed.pdf

Good luck
 
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Glen Lucas puts something on his first turning of bowls that appears to look like Gesso and then stacks them for drying with little other than sticks between the stacked blanks. I have not got even a tiny clue what he uses.

I remember seeing that in a video. It's glue...I can't remember exactly what, but if I had to guess it's a PVA glue.
 
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I took it out after a month to remove the faceplate and noticed decent sized cracks in the top edge as well as the bottom. Wasted :( I had also put shavings in the bag. .

Bill you put the bowl in the bag with the faceplate still on? Faceplate should be removed for drying because as the bowl dries the area attached to faceplate will want to change shape but because of the faceplate it cannot so you get a crack. My theory based on wood movement as it dries .
 
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Bill C, you don’t have to copy someone else, you do have to understand what happens and how you can control it or at least try.

Trying to keep this simple, see Wood as bundles of straws, they will dry in the air, fast or slow depending on how dry the air is and if it is moving, temperature also influences the drying.

All those straws are held together by a substance that is called Lignin, it is pretty tough stuff or else the wood would fall apart, however heating this Lignin will make it a bit less tough and the straws can move some if they have to.

So as these straws dry they get thinner, not really shorter (one tenth of a procent from wet to oven dry) then we have some straws that are different than the rest, the pith area straws have been fed to grow up fast in the length, while the later straws that are more rigid to keep the stem from falling over and these will become the heartwood, and these get filled with products the tree doesn’t need anymore, then there are the sapwood straws that are full of saps to enable the tree to grow, but still without any of the byproducts of the tree.

So you can see that even if we could let all these straws dry evenly, there is the difference of the type of straws that have some shrink more or less than the other straws, and some of the stresses in drying wood stem from this, as said before heating the wood will let some of these stresses become less.

But even at normal room temperature the straws can move albeit much slower than if heated like in boiling water, so giving the wood enough time the stresses will get lower.

Of course we have another problem when we turn wood in side grain direction and with all shorter pieces of wood where the endgrain is exposed to the air, where the end of the wood will dry fast, but the wood farther from the end will not dry like the wood on the end, and now something has to give, splitting is how the difference in thickness is accommodated .

With a bowl we have this endgrain on two sides of the bowl this wood will dry very fast while the side grain is unable to dry at that speed, so if we now can slow the endgrain from drying any faster than the side grain, we won’t get the stresses from that, or we boil the bowl in water to heat the lignin and enable these straws/wood to move reducing the stresses.

There still will be some stresses but most wood will be able to accommodate these, here is were the pith wood lets us down, it is different than the heartwood and also weaker and will split very easily, often in minutes after being exposed to the air it will start splitting.

I have used brown paper bags to slow down the drying of my rough turned bowls, this works if you can keep the drying slow enough, not every place is identical, but most places people live in are very similar, outside or shops and garages etc don’t have to be,

So a brown paper bag with a wet rough turned bowl will get air in it that becomes totally saturated, and so drying stops, now the paper bag will absorb some of the moisture in the air in the bag, giving the air in the bag to take some more moisture from the wood, air around the bag will take moisture from the bag, and so the paper bag will absorb some moisture from the air in the bag, and so on and on it goes.

By reducing the speed at which the paper bag dries will control the speed of the bowl drying inside the bag, so this is up to you, I have a 99% succes rate or better even with fruit wood like Apple.


For me, I place the bag right on the floor in my basement, where there is no air blowing and no heating from the sun or other, I never add anything to the bag, as this would lay against the wood and prevent the wood from drying, making the grow of mold/fungus very likely, it is something I still check for in the first week or two for, if there is any, I wipe the bowl dry and place the bowl in a dry bag, and close the paper bag, the wet bag can be used again when dry.

Bowls in paper bags
drying in Paper bags.jpg

Ash bowls dry
Dried in Paper bags.jpg

Applewood bowls dry
[ Apple bowls dried in paper bags.jpg
 
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Joined
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So, from the looks of what I have seen here, I would be better off drying my roughed, Anchor sealed blanks in the unheated garage rather than in the house basement in the vicinity of the gas furnace. Actually, I mean to pose this as a question of advice here.
  1. Unheated Midwest garage?
  2. Moderately heated basement?
The question comes up at this point, because in our new home, I have more basement storage available that I previously did. I also alternate between the brown paper bags and the Anchor Seal.

Tom, It's all about relative humidity in the air...and that'll determine the best course. RH changes seasonally, so what works in summer may well be a disaster in winter. I would guess that RH near a furnace would also swing substantially depending on how much heating you're doing. You want to monitor you bowl drying area with a RH meter to get a sense for where things are at.

If you have a fair bit of space you might consider walling off a closet-sized area, insulating, and put in a small dehumidifier. That's essentially what my bowl drying shed is, and I love the control I have in a closed enviroment. I just fill moving boxes with bowls and check them every month or so, sometimes rotating top for bottom bowls.
 

Emiliano Achaval

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I have tried every drying method I have heard about over the last 25 years. (Micro wave, PEG, boiling in various liquids, soaking, kiln, vacuum kiln). They don't work. I rough turn green wood with uniform wall thickness from 3/4" to 1 1/2", depending on bowl diameter, 10% rule. Coat it with Anchorseal, weigh it, put a slip of paper inside with the date and the weight. Weigh it every month and when the weight is the same for two months it's dry. Return it and finish.
Agree with you. But I gave up on any and all other methods too. I rough turn, up on a shelve they go, if they make, they make it. I turn too much to be bagging and checking bowls in bags. I dont even use anchor seal... I guess I'm lucky I live in humid upcountry Maui...
 

hockenbery

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I started out using Anchorseal. Works great.
Switched to paper bags around the turn of the century works better for me since I only turn a handful of bowls to dry a year. Paper bag much less mess more up front work since I live in high humidity areas i rinse the bowls in water towel dry and put it in a bag. I swap the damp bag for dry ones the first 5 days and check for mold. I either crimp a single bag shut or put another bag over the top as lid. When the bags are dry it goes on a shelf for 4-6 months.
my experience bagged bowls dry a month or two faster.

I rarely loose a bowl to cracking

@Bill Campbell
I posted a tutorial with some links to videos of a demo I do for clubs on working with green wood.
Check out the videos.
http://www.aawforum.org/community/index.php?threads/working-with-green-wood.11626/

One thought I had - logs begin to crack anywhere from a few minutes to several month.
Often old wood is cracked when you turn it and the cracks open as it dries.
Biggest barrier to success for most new turner is Poor curves and uneven walls
The big tenon of a faceplate also contributes a with a chuck tenon I turn the bottom thinner than the sidewalls to inched 2/3 of the tenon in the bottom thickness.
With a faceplate I used to drill a 1”hole in the middle of the faceplate mount to a depth that would allow the turning away of the lead point.
 
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I have several racks on wheels that I use for green bowl drying, after running out of paper sacks
several years ago I started using some old towels that we use for utility purposes and throw the
towel over the top of the newly turned bowls and this has worked fine for my needs. Hopefully paper
sacks come back into vogue and plastic ones go away and we will have a good supply of renewable sacks again.
 
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Andrew, here's how I dry all of my bowls. I usually turn green down to the finished size always trying to make sure to keep the walls consistently the same thickness. I take a large cardboard box and fill it with the shaving from recent turnings. I then put the bowl in the box and make sure it is covered. I take it out every few days and weigh it. Once I see it slow down the rate it is losing moisture I will then take it out of the box and sit it on a shelf and again weigh it every few days until it has for the most part stopped losing moisture. Here is a picture of a recent bowl. It is Maple and is 24" wide and 14" deep. It will warp since it is green but it did not crack. Did as I described above, when I put it in the shavings on March 1st it weighed just over 5000 grams. I weighed it yesterday and it weighed 4086 grams. The wall is 5/8" thick. All I do now is mount it on the lathe using a vacuum chuck and sand the inside and out and soak it in oil, a lot of oil for this one.
 

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john lucas

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soaking and boiling and all the other "fancy" methods of drying just seemed like too much work, too messy or had hazardous chemicals laying around. I don't mass produce bowls so i simply go with the turn it, seal the end grain, put it up to dry and wait. Much easier for me. When I really need a bowl right now I just turn it thin and let it warp.
 
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