storing green bowl blanks

[MICHAEL GOLD]

I finish turn all my bowls green. I will have bowl blanks from newly cut tanoak & madrone logs. Because of weight considerations coupled with my bowl size requirements I will have each bank cut to 10" H x 14" W x 16' L. Each will be dripping water & heavy enough. I'll have 6 at a time cut from the logs. I'm new & slow at turning so I'll need to store these blanks for up to 2 weeks. Any information re: keeping these blanks as green as possible for 2 weeks. i.e. sinking each in a plastic tub filled w/ water, coating w/ anchor-seal or both, or any other suggestions would be most appreciated.

Than you in advance.
Michael

 

[hockenbery]

I finish turn all my bowls green. I will have bowl blanks from newly cut tanoak & madrone logs. Because of weight considerations coupled with my bowl size requirements I will have each bank cut to 10" H x 14" W x 16' L. Each will be dripping water & heavy enough. I'll have 6 at a time cut from the logs. I'm new & slow at turning so I'll need to store these blanks for up to 2 weeks. Any information re: keeping these blanks as green as possible for 2 weeks. i.e. sinking each in a plastic tub filled w/ water, coating w/ anchor-seal or both, or any other suggestions would be most appreciated. Than you in advance. Michael

Sinking in water should work for two weeks. The anchor seal won't prevent some end checking and I don't like handling the sealed blanks.
Alternatively you could not finish cut the blanks. Leave them 20" long. Anchor seal the ends. Stack in the shade. When you get ready to turn cut the ends off and turn.

The madrone you will want to keep wet maybe boil the blanks to stabilize.
I have only turned a few pieces of madrone and found it a great material.
One of its best features is the dramatic warping. The bowls will need to be kept wet, turned thin, have shapes that allow the wood to move.

Have fun,
Al

 

[Raul McCai]

I stumbled across this article on a guy's website here: http://www.ronkent.com/techniques.php
I haven't tried this solution yet, but I'm going to.



His goal was to pickup a piece of green wood, turn it, sand it and finish it within a day or two without unsightly cracks occurring



Some goal I'm thinking.



He says (from the web Page) :

"I went to Costco and purchased four half gallon containers of the magic elixir along with a sturdy plastic storage bin of sufficient size to hold the mixture and some bowl blanks. Upon arrival at home, I emptied the detergent into the container and added an equal amount of water. From then on, I would take primarily green wood and rough turn in one day, soak overnight, and finish the next day. Sometimes I didn't finish it on the second day and left it mounted on the lathe overnight and sometimes for a several days. Surprise! They didn't crack! I have since taken green wood, rough turned it, soaked it about four hours and then finish turned it and finished it in one day. In the six to eight months I have been using this technique, I haven't had one bowl crack. A few had a bit of movement, but it was very slight. I have used the following woods: black walnut, vine maple, maple, oak (kiln dried), yew, honey locust, fruiting cherry, birch, plum, apple. "







He uses an amber dish soap concentrate that he gets from CostCo branded Kirkland

I'll need to find some one with a CostCo card, or just go web surfing for amber dish soap concentrate.



He dilutes the soap concentrate 1 - 1 with water. He's tried Alcohol but thinks it's too expensive to justify it.





He cuts his green wood to about an inch thick and starts treating it with the soap



He claims the shavings are much improved and cut quality s better



He says that it does not interfere with his oil soak & sand in Varathane finishing regimen and that it makes sanding better.



The whole time I'm reading this I'm thinking that it just has to interfere with his finishes but he says it doesn't. There's even a sort of scientific explanation for why the solution works and at $7.00 a gallon it's a lot cheaper than the stuff they sell for the job.



Check it out.

 

[Pete Blair]

Store green bowls

I have tried about every method out there including boiling, steaming, bagging, microwaving, waxing, fast air drying with a boot dryer and yes, even Kirkland soap. I didn't like the smell of the soap soaked ones.
My 'go to' are now boil and wax on the outside then I either store outside off the ground under cover of my back deck or place in a large closed plastic garbage can or in a bag. Having said that what I really enjoy most is turning to finish while green.

 

[robo hippy]

I have always turned green to final thickness. For storing, I am more into leaving the log whole, and keeping it covered. When you cut up slabs that sit for a bit, you are risking end checking. If you leave the log whole, and cut off what you are going to turn, then there is only a little checking on the one end. I don't have any log sealer any more. If it will be a day or two, then most of the time I will put the blanks in a large 4 mil plastic contractor's bag, which is the same bag I am going to put the shavings in after a day of turning. If the blanks are cut round, and it may be a week or two, I will wrap them in the stretch plastic film, totally enclosing them in the film. This is generally good for a week or two. Much beyond that and there is a risk of molding. Sinking them in water will be good. I have taken a pile of them, put wet towels over them after wrapping the outside edges in the stretch film, then put plastic over that, making sure it goes all the way down to the ground/concrete floor. Even a kids pool with some water in it and a plastic cover over all the wood will keep the humidity up enough so that there should be no cracking.

I have used, and still use the soap soak method developed by Ron Kent, which he came up with for dealing with the Norfolk Island Pine. If you have ever tried to sand any type of pine or fir, you know how fast your abrasives load up. The soap acts as a lubricant, and makes every single wood I have made into bowls sand out a LOT easier. Also, sanding out dry wood is much easier than sanding out any green wood, even if it makes more dust. Cracking can still remain a problem. I soaked 500 or so bowls in the DNA, and have done thousands in the LDD (liquid dish washing detergent). With the thin turned bowls, both soaks do nothing to prevent cracks that I could ever determine. DNA seemed to make the wood harder to sand out, and I have no idea why. So, soak for 24 hours minimum, then remove and rinse off the surface soap. Back to the shop, and set them on the floor for the surface to dry a little, generally an hour or three. Then wrap the rim in the stretch plastic film. This step, along with making sure to round over the rims seems to do more to prevent cracks than any other step I have taken. The rim is the vulnerable part. You can keep an even wall thickness till you get to the rim, and it stops, making it a transition area. A sharp edge, besides the risk of slicing yourself as you turn, is very fine, and cracks will form there first, in part because of the changing wall thickness. So, the plastic film puts some compression on the rim, and seals it.

Another point in letting the LDD soaked bowls dry before sanding is that all of the fragrance evaporates out. I have not been able to smell or taste any soap after drying is done. If you wet sand, and then finish before it is dry, you may seal the fragrance in a bit longer, though it will still evaporate out eventually. The brown soap is the best rather than the green or blue because they can color the wood. I do keep a separate vat for the black walnut because it does draw some color out, which will stain other lighter woods. Most of the other light woods leave little color, or at least not enough to change the colors of the bowls you are soaking. When the vat gets too dark, I try to find an ant hill......

I talk about this a bit in some of my video clips on You Tube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7rV_Y9vwoTl18_dSSaffjw

robo hippy

 

[Bill Boehme]

I have another one for you -- PEG 1000 (polyethylene glycol in which 1000 is an indicator of the average molecular chain size). At room temperature it is like a slightly soft waxy material. About ten years ago, I bought a five pound block of the stuff from Craft Supplies. It is dissolved in hot water and then green turned bowls from freshly cut living trees are soaked in this stuff for several days. The only dealer that I know of that still sells it for treating green wood is Lee Valley. I still have it and decided that it wasn't anything that I wanted to try after reading all of the negative comments. Here are some of its drawbacks:

• It turns the wood darker and makes it drab looking
• It leaves the wood feeling greasy feeling
• It won't take a finish
• It is expensive

Other than that, I hear it is great stuff. It stabilizes the wood and eliminates warping. If that was the only thing that mattered then I suppose that it might have caught on. I have tried to give it away to fellow club members without any success. PEG comes in molecular weights ranging from about 100 to 20,000. The higher the number, the harder it is. It is used in just about everything from soft drinks to cosmetics to medicines and industrial uses. A familiar one is PEG 3350 (AKA, Miralax), a nuclear-option laxative.

 

[Raul McCai]

Penetration

On a tangent that relates to this topic because of all the discussion of applied treatments like soaps and stabilizers:

I wonder about penetration.
In another forum there was discussion about BLO and whether to thin with MS or Alcohol to achieve higher penetration. I have used MS for years telling myself that it helps but really I don't think it does.

The reason I think it doesn't help with any penetration is as follows:

The size of any given molecule ( soap, Pentacryl, Salt, PEG - whatever) does not change when you thin it in a solution whether is is soluble in the thinning agent or when you suspend it in a solution in which it is merely miscible.

Take Salt in water as an example. It dissolves completely in water, but the salt molecule never changes, nor does its size change. This is why reverse osmosis filtration can break the bonds between the salt and the water and let water pass the molecular sieve and not the salt.

Same with BLO or soap or anything else. If there is a molecule, then that molecule has a given size and the pores in the wood one wishes to treat are like the sieve that will either let those molecules pass or it will not.

Then there is osmotic pressure. I am aware of Salinity and osmosis. What about things like Soap or Pentracyl? Do these things have an advantage there? Does osmosis serve to force these molecules deeper into the wood - - or the water out? I don't know. Ron Kent says he believes that osmosis is playing a part in the Soap soak treatment. http://www.ronkent.com/techniques.php But he has no science to support it, no research and even he calls it a working theory.

His contention is that the soap is thirsty and sucks the water out of the wood using osmosis. Which theory tells me that the soap is not penetrating.


Ron Kent says he turns the green wood to about an inch thick then slathers on his soap solution and lets it soak in and repeats maybe 6 or so times. He says it foams as it soaks in. I wonder how far it is soaking in? Maybe it's not soaking in at all?

Thing I don't feel well about with soap is later applied finish. If it doesn't penetrate, then it might not be an issue, but if it does, then how might it affect the water based finishes I like to use?

 

[robo hippy]

Well, for sure it soaks in more with the end grain, but not as much as with the side grain. As near as I can tell, the soap acts like a lubricant when you sand, or turn. I wouldn't consider penetration to be a big deal unless you sand through it, which I would hope you wouldn't have to do, at least in theory, if your turning/cutting technique is any good. It really helps with woods that want to burn or glaze over when you sand like cherry, and some maples. Maybe it is the glycerine in most soaps. I don't know...

robo hippy