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Walnut Bowl Blank Drying Question

Joined
Nov 4, 2009
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Southern Wisconsin
I started turning last October, what a great hobby!

I've roughed out a dozen or so walnut bowl blanks from 18" diameter down to 6", using the 10% wall thickness rule of thumb.

My question is about sealing those blanks for drying. I use Anchorseal I buy from our turning club. I've coated some of the blanks fully, and some just on the outside. I wonder if the fully coated one's will dry?

  1. Coat the whole thing inside and out.
  2. Coat only the outside.
  3. Coat only the inside.
  4. Do it differently all together.

I put the sealed blanks in my basement with a dehumidifier set at 45%. I live in Wisconsin and it's usually 60% humidity outside in the summer.

All help is appreciated.
 

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Joined
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Lake Saint Louis, MO
Hi Tom,

Here's what works for me. I turn down to 10% then use anchorseal only on the end grain both inside and out and store in a closed brown paper bag with the date and species of wood written outside. Hope this helps.
And yes it is a great hobby! I've been turning for about 15 years now and it's the only hobby that I'm never bored with. So much wood, so little time. :)

Doug Stevens
Lake Saint Louis, Mo
 
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No need to coat the inside. The direction of shrinkage mechanically closes any checks that hope to form that way. If you don't have walls too steep, you should do well with the bag to buffer, or with dry shavings in the bag for a buffer. Take them out and/or change the bag if it's wet. Otherwise you'll grow some interesting mildew.
 
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Wet bowl drying - continuted

Hello -

On the bowls that I've coated both the inside and outside should I re-turn the inside to "un-coat" them?

Thanks for your help.
 

Steve Worcester

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I out the date and species on it with a big sharpie, coat the whole thing and then end up picking up a year or more later and turning it to final size.

Turned on the other day that I did in 2000. Guess I need to turn more bowls
 
Joined
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Hi Tom: I also use the methods mentioned in this thread. Additionally, you might want to Google "drying turning blanks in denatured alcohol" and "microwave drying". Both methods will accelerate the drying process and get you to a finished product much sooner.

This link: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rwallace/WTlinks.html will take you to a summary page of turning info. Scroll down to the section on "drying blanks" for more info.

Best regards,

Tom Hamilton, in Douglasville GA, wondering if you and I are related.
#36277
 
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Thanks for the Great Link

Hi Tom -

I read through most of those ways of drying bowl blanks and have tried the microwave version on a screwdriver handle. It worked well, but that was a lot smaller than a bowl.

I see a lot of suggestions to coat the whole thing in wax (Anchorseal), then some only coat the end grain on the outside, some on both inside and outside end grain only.

I think the most valuable thing I've learned is that even if wax is applied over the entire rough blank it will dry, just slower.

Thanks for the help, this is great.
 
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You got it right. Slower and more expense. So leave it bare in the future, but don't bother taking it out now. If you can control the relative humidity around the blank by other means, you don't even need to do the outside. I use a lot of maple, and the outside gave me unattractive mildew.
 
Joined
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I have found walnut to be quite forgiving w/ drying. I agree w/ MM about buffering with a paper bag and not resorting to much coating, unless it's a not-so-forgiving species or really figured. I have had more problems with more finicky woods like cherry and crabapple. In these cases coat the endgrain, figure, and only the outside if none of the above. Actually have had less problems with cherry burls than with mere end grain. The brown kraft paper grocery bag is abundant around our shop, which is kept at an average 40% humidity. Rule is slow, metered drying to yield the best results. Still, we count on 15% failure for roughouts drying.

Coat the whole thing and you wil perhaps wait a LONG time for it to dry. S L O W .

P.S.--First Tom: where are you in WI? We are near Antigo in the NE.
 
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Joined
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Tom,

I coat just the end grain inside and out and store in a paper bag with the date, species and weight recorded.
I then periodically reweigh and record the weight, about once a month or so. When the weight has stabilized the turning is as dry as it's going to get in that environment and ready to be finish turned. It might be interesting to experiment with different coating methods to see how it really effects drying time.

I found some inexpensive postal scales on Amazon that weigh up to 75 pounds.

George
 
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Tom,

I coat just the end grain inside and out and store in a paper bag with the date, species and weight recorded.
I then periodically reweigh and record the weight, about once a month or so. When the weight has stabilized the turning is as dry as it's going to get in that environment and ready to be finish turned. It might be interesting to experiment with different coating methods to see how it really effects drying time.

This business of weighing, re-weighing and dating is a bit of a mystery to me. I started doing it one year because it was the trendy thing. Then I realized that original weight and those a month or two beyond were worthless pieces of information. I had made a practice of writing inside the mortise at the bottom, and noticed when my 2" mortise had shrunk about an eighth of an inch, weight became meaningful. It's the method I use now. Weigh on Wednesdays, re-weigh on Saturday morning, turn if ready. Re-weighing is a great way to grope and gloat, but mostly it wastes time.

It would be extremely difficult to draw meaningful measured conclusions from such tests as you mention. Wood dries by losing moisture. It loses it to the air, but that's usually pretty busy with a load of its own (72 percent on the upstairs now), so any comparison of coating/packaging would have to maintain a constant RH as a condition of validity. Side-by-side simultaneous controls would be second best, with each undergoing the same changes. Problem is, even when you try to explain that to an alcoholic, they claim that the shape of the work is part of the process! Now try to make the identical shape, grain and orientation bowls it would allegedly take to dislodge them from their belief.
 
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