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Green wood to seasoned in one hour!

Odie

Odie

Panning for Montana gold, with Betsy, the mule!
TOTW Team
Joined
Dec 22, 2006
Messages
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Location
Missoula, MT
Odie, it sure would be nice,

Seller info
congaman_cote ( 7 ) 100% Positive feedback
Click to expand...

i noticed that he has good feedback but a small sample, he does not say his method is patented , i am curious
 
i have no faith in this whatsoever.

If it were real, all it would take is one person to buy it and then tell everyone and if it worked this person would tell everyone.
 
Can't find the link now, of course, and might not be the same guy, but a few years ago a fellow in GA (IIRC) was flogging a magic potion and/or process for this, on raw wood. He didn't file for patent protection, because it would require disclosure. I think he wanted the gummint to pay him (sight unseen), and then place it in the public domain.

If he provided a magic potion, with a secret formula, the secret would probably be safe, because intermediate steps (biological or chemical) would stay secret.

I think he's dreaming, even if it works. As far as I'm concerned, he can take it with him to the grave. The process will eventually be re-discovered by someone with a more generous, more scientific, mindset, and the new guy will reap the accolades. This happens more often than you'd like to think.

Here are some US patent classifications related to drying wood:
34/1, 34/9.5, 34/16.5, 34/92, 34/412, 34/519, 34/497 from some documents I've collected.
 
I saw that too Odie! Figured the same thing as Alex. If I remember correctly, he offered "complete instructions". Sounds way too fishy. His low sales number didn't help my pessimism any either.
Don L.
 
From green wood to dry in an hour low cost

Guys - this method has been around for many years, in fact I have used it myself several times. The process is very straightforward and can be available to all for a few cents. The process is as follows:

1. Turn bowl to final green size and shape.
2. Stand back and admire, and ask significant other's opinion.
3. Take their suggestions and decide on small shape adjustment.
4. Make shape adjustment with coincidental, unplanned tool catch.
5. Dodge bowl as it flies off of lathe into wall behind your head.
6. Examine fractured pieces.
7. Place fractured pieces into operating shop woodstove.
8. Bowl is dry within minutes!


There was a guy about 50 years ago who advertised hat racks for a dollar in the want ads at the rear of the magazine. Everyone who sent in their dollar received a finishing nail in return!

Jerry
 
all you need to dry wood quick is a wind machine and a series of U V lights, this are indoors
build a turning machine to turn the wood while the sun is at its hottest while a wind blower are blowing across the wood
 
I demonstrated bowls outdoors one weekend a few summers ago. I turned them very thin so people could see the light coming through. They were dry almost as quick as I got them off the lathe. It made for a fun demo. I turned about 6 or 8 a day for 3 days. I could have turned more if I had not been using an underpowered mini lathe.
 
charlie knighton said:
i noticed that he has good feedback but a small sample, he does not say his method is patented , i am curious
Click to expand...

Ahem... 6 of those 8 are positives given to him as the buyer in a transaction, not the seller of the "Method secret."

  • "This method Saves time and "time is money" From green wet wood to a sand able dry uncracked warp less piece."
  • "This process is so quick it does not give time for the wood to warp crack or discolour."
Interesting considering the piece in the picture (nice burl) has quite a few cracks in the rim area.
 
Thanks for posting the link, Odie. It reminded me I need to get my eBay listing set up for that bridge I'm selling in New York. :D

Seriously, someone asked about this guy recently on another forum, and while he might have the Next Big Thing[TM], I suspect he's got something like a write-up about microwave drying or something similar. I have strong doubts about a "breakthrough discovery". ;)
 
Joe Greiner said:
Can't find the link now, of course, and might not be the same guy, but a few years ago a fellow in GA (IIRC) was flogging a magic potion and/or process for this, on raw wood. He didn't file for patent protection, because it would require disclosure. I think he wanted the gummint to pay him (sight unseen), and then place it in the public domain.

Hi Joe,

I think the guy you are thinking of is Eugene Sexton.

http://www.esp90.com/page1.html

I read about this maybe 20 years ago, and I received an email from him not more than 3 years ago. Sure has been a lot of water gone under the bridge since I first heard of it. Still no progress on selling his idea I guess. ;)

But in my opinion, drying wood is pretty simple, I just stick with the old tried and true methods. I guess I am lucky that I don't have the problems in drying that the ebay seller has listed at the bottom of his/her ad.

I turn green without problems with cracking. I paper bag without mold developing. Sometimes I think that we are all looking for a magic process to make it easier, when it's pretty simple already.

That being said... I do have 5 gallons of denatured alcohol and a tub of liquid dish washing detergent for sale for a real nice price. :)

Dave
Click to expand...
 
That's the one, Dave. The new web page indicates he's applied for a patent after all, and slightly changed his tune. Patent applications are generally posted in the USPTO database about a year after submittal. The only one listed now for [sexton-eugene] in the Inventor Name field is for a "Magnetic Therapy Device." And a similar contraption in issued patents (#6628818). Another Eugene Sexton, in Ohio, has a design patent for a Child's Rocker.

I love stuff like this, to help calibrate my BS Detector. This one didn't red-line, but it triggered the warning light.

The Patent Office doesn't discriminate against violating the laws of physics. Patent #6025810 was issued for communication faster than the speed of light. And perpetual motion devices are the only ones that still require submittal of a working model.
 
Looks like most of you were checking your BS meters, as well! :eek:

Yep, I guess I'm in the company of most of you here.......but, you never know about these things......could have been a miracle breakthrough! Someone could make a mint, if it sliced and diced onions, as well! :cool2:

I guess we'll never really know for sure......that is, unless someone has a few spare bucks to check it out!

ooc
 
using a vacuum to speed dry something works with coffee, if it work with thick cuts of meats or fruit then it might work with wood
 
MichaelMouse said:
Look again. The chart is how much vacuum you have to pull.

See this one. http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Calib-boil.html
Click to expand...

Huh? Robert's chart clearly shows that the boiling point of water at sea level drops as the vacuum increases. Negative air pressure. Your link discusses the boiling point of water at various positive atmospheric air pressures as a function of elevation above sea level.
 
The vacuum kiln principle works that way. I know of some real large vacuum kilns that are used by furniture makers and they get the wood dry much quicker and more stable than a conventional kiln.
 
Vaughn said:
Huh? Robert's chart clearly shows that the boiling point of water at sea level drops as the vacuum increases. Negative air pressure. Your link discusses the boiling point of water at various positive atmospheric air pressures as a function of elevation above sea level.
Click to expand...

It makes me want to take my vacuum pump up the mountain for a test. I wonder how that will affect the maximum vacuum of my machine. Last time I checked here at 1,000 feet, it pulled between 28 and 29 which worked great on my former pickup truck.
 
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Vacuum Drying of Wood

For those of you who loved H.S. or college chemistry or for those of you who wish you had paid more attention, look at the following link. It is a dissertaion for a student at Virginia Tech dealing with the impact of vacuum pressures on wood drying. No, you don't have to read the whole thing. The introduction gives you the Cliff notes version. Note the interesting things like the very low pressures required (18mm, Hg) and the fact that wood dries principally in the longitudinal direction. And with a good vacuum, temperature is not that important.

A practical aspect of maintaining vacuums, is the effect of off gasing of materials under a vacuum. These off gassed materials have to be handled by the pumping action also. If the volume gets too large, the pumping efficiency is affected and the attainable pressures rise. Wet wood has a very high moisture content, hence a lot of vapor that must be handled by the pump.

I doubt that the pumps which woodturners use for chucking have the capacity to be much good in bowl drying.
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/public/etd-02198-185538/materials/DISS.PDF

I still think that my wood stove process is probably the most effective.:)

Jerry
 
Vaughn said:
........ Negative air pressure......
Click to expand...

I think all of these tables are confusing us. All air pressures are positive since it is conventional to state atmospheric pressure as an absolute value (meaning that the zero reference is a perfect vacuum). Vacuum, on the other hand is normally stated as a gauge pressure, meaning that it is a relative pressure given as the difference between atmospheric pressure and the pressure within the vacuum container. It is normal to state this as a positive number if the term vacuum is used to indicate that it is less than the ambient pressure (but still a positive pressure in absolute terms). The pressure in a pressure vessel such as a shop air compressor tank is also a gauge pressure, so it is a relative term with respect to the ambient pressure.

The thing to keep in mind when comparing relative vacuum values to absolute atmospheric pressure values is to subtract the vacuum value from the ambient absolute pressure to obtain the absolute pressure within the vacuum vessel. In the case of a pressure vessel, these terms are added together. Conversion of units always seem to be involved because it is typical to have vacuum stated as inches of mercury while pressure is typically stated as pounds per square inch. Atmospheric pressure seems to use an almost unlimited number of measurement scales including inches of water, centimeters of mercury, inches of mercury, bars, atmospheres, pascals, PSI, PSF, and my favorite, pennyweight per hectare.

I will go ahead and state the obvious: in absolute terms, there is no such thing as a negative pressure since a pure vacuum is the absolute zero reference.
 
Thanks for the correction, Bill. You're right...I was incorrectly using positive and negative to compare atmospheric pressure and vacuum.
 
Vaughn said:
Huh? Robert's chart clearly shows that the boiling point of water at sea level drops as the vacuum increases. Negative air pressure. Your link discusses the boiling point of water at various positive atmospheric air pressures as a function of elevation above sea level.
Click to expand...

Read what's there, gentlemen. The first clearly states that it is a vacuum of X being drawn. The second indicates what the boiling point will be at a specific pressure (or altitude, on that "standard" day), not vacuum.
 
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The Virginia Tech apparatus is described in US patent #6634118.

A freeze-drying process is described in US patent #5852880, from Alaska.
 
Steelguy, I glanced over Mr. Chens report and 18mm Hg is clearly a typo. It's supposed to be 18cm Hg which isn't that much vacuum, either. He only tests Red oak so the study has limited usefulness for drying the other hundreds of species. I'm also left wondering how this qualifies for a doctorate in Philosophy.

Is anyone picking up a reading on their BS meter?
 
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Robert Manning said:
Steelguy, I glanced over Mr. Chens report and 18mm Hg is clearly a typo. It's supposed to be 18cm Hg which isn't that much vacuum, either. He only tests Red oak so the study has limited usefulness for drying the other hundreds of species. I'm also left wondering how this qualifies for a doctorate in Philosophy.
Click to expand...

Are you thinking in reverse again? He means the pressure was 16 or 18mmHg depending on what process or test he's discussing. It is natural, as indicated above, to use the term pressure not the differential which would, in a STP case be 760-18 or 742 mmHg in your mind, equal to a "gage reading" of 29.21 in.Hg.

Pressure is the only meaningful measure scientifically, since it remains the same regardless of external atmospherics. Denver, at a mile high, would show a standard pressure of around 24 in Hg, which would start the differential considerably below the sea level 29.92.

Yes, I remember the difference between absolute and corrected altimeter readings. ;)
 
Robert Manning said:
Steelguy, I glanced over Mr. Chens report and 18mm Hg is clearly a typo. It's supposed to be 18cm Hg which isn't that much vacuum, either. He only tests Red oak so the study has limited usefulness for drying the other hundreds of species. I'm also left wondering how this qualifies for a doctorate in Philosophy.

Is anyone picking up a reading on their BS meter?
Click to expand...

Em, no

I suggest you spend just a little more time looking at the report. He repeats the 18 mm hg, over and over again (at least for times by my quick count). Plus most of his charts terminate around 18 mm Hg.

See Wikipedia

760 mm of Hg is (roughly) sea-level
so 18 mm of Hg is listed as "medium" vacuum (above link). It's about has hard as the pumps many of us use for chuck can, maybe, reach. It's about the same vacuum as is in a light bulb.

Further, actually glancing through his report, it looks solid enough that I can see how his advisor approved it for submital. It appears to be enough of his own work, with lots of references to others.

I was interested to see the differences between red and white oak's drying, an interesting read.

TTFN
Ralph
 
MichaelMouse said:
Are you thinking in reverse again? He means the pressure was 16 or 18mmHg depending on what process or test he's discussing. It is natural, as indicated above, to use the term pressure not the differential which would, in a STP case be 760-18 or 742 mmHg in your mind, equal to a "gage reading" of 29.21 in.Hg.

Pressure is the only meaningful measure scientifically, since it remains the same regardless of external atmospherics. Denver, at a mile high, would show a standard pressure of around 24 in Hg, which would start the differential considerably below the sea level 29.92.

Yes, I remember the difference between absolute and corrected altimeter readings. ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks for your civilized persistence, Michael. Now I see what you're saying. You're speaking in terms of atmospheric pressure, which I have always thought of as 14.7 PSI, but can surely be measured as inches of mercury. I was thinking only in terms of the pressure differential on the gauge. This may answer my question on whether my pump will pull the same pressure up on the mountain. Will it be easier for the pump at higher elevation? It is starting with a lower pressure, but the air is less dense at a given temperature. I'm going to guess that this pump's maximum differential will always be the same gauge reading at any elevation, although temperature/air density, might make a difference.
 
Robert Manning said:
I'm also left wondering how this qualifies for a doctorate in Philosophy.
Click to expand...

The dissertation was for a Ph.D. in Wood Science and Forest Products and not a Ph.D. in philosophy.

As far as covering every known species of wood known to man in his dissertation is concerned, I think that the familiar anecdote about the connection between advanced degrees and specialization is applicable, "the more advanced the degree, the more that you know about less until you reach the pinnacle of academic achievement by knowing everything about nothing".

More seriously, red oak is probably a good representative of commercially viable domestic hardwoods. Dissertations in science are generally not written in an academic vacuum (groan), but are often driven by real-world issues.
 
Thesis Topics and Turning

You guys shouldn't be so hard on advanced degree people and their thesis topics. :)

In the sciences there are normally two different doctoral degrees floating around . Ph.D. and Sc.D. Doctor of Philosophy and Science respectively. There generally is a specialization attachment to the degree. So there are PhDs in Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, and yes even philosophy..... Just like BA and BS degrees are granted for many different specializations.

The programs tend to be 4-6 years in length and generally involve a Masters degree, also. The thesis is the independent work portion of the degree which also includes about 3 years of course work and several qualifying exams. The purpose of the thesis is to demonstrate that at least once you have done something really well, have done it independently, and that it has passed peer review. In the engineering sciences, they generally are on topics funded by some organization or company and as a result have practical relevance.

My experience has been that those who shoot at those with advanced degrees wish they had one:) It is similar to the banter in turning groups about "flat boarders".

I was reminded last evening about the "instant gratification" aspect of wood turning. I have taken a hiatus from turning for the past 2 months while I have been doing flat boarding. I am building a very large (102"L x 40"H x 20" D) cherry side board for our church with six inset doors. It is frame and panel construction with attendant stock preparation, mortise and tenon joints, resawn panels, staining, finishing, etc. It has about 100 bd ft in it and I still have about 6 weeks of work left.

What has that got to do with woodturning? Well, two of my friends were making sausage yesterday (don't laugh - they are retired) and broke the chintzy plastic pusher that had been provided to pack the sausage mix into the auger that fills the casings. They dropped off the broken piece and the machinery and asked that I turn them a new one out of wood, and gee could I increase the length of the handle, put a knob on it, etc.... So I took a 1 hour break from flatboarding, and made a wonderful, very nice oak part which has style, finish, utility and could be a piece of art. I felt a wonderful sense of accomplishment and gratification. I even got suitable oohs and ahs from my wife when I showed it to her.

This morning - back to flat boarding - Spent all morning flattening boards for the 1.5" thick sideboard top!!

Jerry
 
Getting back to drying the wood in one hour, and just to show you that I'm not just whistling dixie, I'm posting a photo of my pump and gauge. I'm very close to making this work.

I have some of my own ideas for a pressure/vacuum vessel, but I would appreciate some input on ideas for a vessel. I would also like to see some information or a photo of the gauge that measures 18mm Hg. and how much this costs.
 

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steelguy said:
... I was reminded last evening about the "instant gratification" aspect of wood turning. I have taken a hiatus from turning for the past 2 months while I have been doing flat boarding.......
Click to expand...

Deferred gratification also has its benefits. I am on a sabbatical from turning since my wife says that I have deferred some projects too long. I know that any hope of getting a nice fancy lathe some day in the future means deferring instant gratification for a while.

Robert Manning said:
Getting back to drying the wood in one hour, and just to show you that I'm not just whistling dixie, I'm posting a photo of my pump and gauge. I'm very close to making this work.

I have some of my own ideas for a pressure/vacuum vessel, but I would appreciate some input on ideas for a vessel. I would also like to see some information or a photo of the gauge that measures 18mm Hg. and how much this costs.
Click to expand...

Dixie is spelled with a capital "D". ;)

It will take something fancier than a Sears engine vacuum gauge to measure 18 mm-Hg. A round about way is to use a surplus aircraft barometric altimeter with the Kollsman window set to read pressure altitude. Next, you would need to convert from the altimiter reading of feet to the desired units such as mm-Hg. This is not a linear relationship so it would need to be computed from a standard day database with corrections for temperature and humidity (OK, so that's two more instruments that you will need).
 
Robert,
Just use whatchagot. If you can't pull 29.2" Hg vacuum (or whatever), or 100 cfm at that vacuum (or whatever), it will just take a little longer. The challenge may be finding/constructing a large enough vessel (to hold a reasonable size turning) that will withstand the vacuum. Of much greater interest to me and perhaps others is whether the method will dry a wet turning without cracking. Am inclined to be skeptical while awaiting the test results.
 
Vacuum Measurement

Robert - I don't think that Fisher Scientific is in Dixie, however they carry all manner of vacuum pumps, vacuum gauges, vacuum desiccators....... (www.fishersci.com)

An "inexpensive" vacuum gauge capable of measuring in the 0-60 mm Hg range is $177.

Jerry
 
I should have known about the "D" in Dixie, Bill, given my ancestry. I'm not sure if my ancestors would consider Texas, Dixie, though, since you have flown seven different flags. Make up your mind.:cool2:

And that particular Sears gauge is Made in USA so it could work miracles.

Steelguy, $177 puts the project way beyond the $20 budget promised on Ebay. Cool link, though.

I think I'm going to take Texians advice and 'run what'cha brung'. I've got my eye on a 5 gallon propane tank for the vessel.
 
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