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It followed me home, can I keep it?

Lou Jacobs

Lou Jacobs

Joined
Jul 18, 2018
Messages
1,312
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2,811
Location
Baltimore, MD
Website
loujacobswoodturning.com
0211D3C6-1F94-46A2-8F11-9F221151541C.jpegI have a (good) dilemma I’ve been struggling with. Last weekend a beautiful, healthy beech tree toppled over next to a bike path in our neighborhood. (The tree grew on a steep hillside and the earth eroded away under it.). I brought home five 12” sections and spent a good bit of the last two days slabbing, bandsawing and rough turning it into about 18 bowl blanks, including taking cores with my McNaughton tool. 122E47EB-3396-46C3-BCAB-4115F527C313.jpegWhile I was working yesterday an arborist came to the alley behind my shop to take down a cherry tree that was leaning over the alley and impeding the trash truck’s rounds. How could I resist? I brought home nine 12-13” sections and a few 6-8” diameter lengths. The sections I had to cut into 14” lengths in order to be able to move them. I quickly covered the ends with AnchorSeal, as I knew I couldn’t get to them right away. My usual practice would be to rough turn bowl ASAP, before coating the end grain and putting them aside to dry.
It’ll be about a week before I can give these the time they’d require to do that. SO, the question is, should I leave them as is (I threw a tarp over them), and hope,that they don’t check with the AS sealer, or should I slab them to remove the pith sections and set aside until I can bandsaw and rough turn, or should I slab, bandsaw, and then coat the newly exposed end grain. I guess the real question is are they more likely to check as rounds or slabs?
 
Hi Lou,
Nice find!
Not to show you up, but me and Mike got lucky this last week and stopped to look at about a mile stretch where they were clearing trees for power lines.
Found Maple (spalted, and one burl), Walnut, Elm, and what I think is Honey Locust, cut into nice lengths. Filled my van & then my storage area! :)
Looking forward to see what you turn!
Regards,
Lyle
 

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Split them in half and seal them up in a plastic bag (55 gal drum liners are good for big pieces) If the water can't evaporate the blanks won't check. Keep them in the shade and throw some extra water in if needed. If you leave them very long they will spalt, which can also be a good thing.
 
If you’re not going to get to them for a while, I wouldn’t bother bandsaw if them into rounds. It will take more anchorseal than half-logs, and I don’t think the chance of checking is any different. I have hoards of half logs sitting around waiting to be turned. Some have cracks, and will likely be firewood. Not ideal, but at least I didn’t go through the trouble of rounding first. Also, nice finds!
 
When I get them to the rounded on the bandsaw stage the entire outside edge gets a coat of Anchorseal unless they are going on the lathe immediately.

IMG_0774.jpeg
 
I agree with the rest and can tell you from experience - Split them (actually, split out about a 5th ring out from the pith, up to maybe 2 inch width -depends on diameter of log- slab from the middle including the pith would be even better) and anchor seal the ends - I guarantee cracking of cherry logs no matter how well you have them Anchorsealed - Been there, done that, and in a climate only a bit further north of yours. Once you have them into half logs without any pith, they often will keep for several months without checking starting (but not indefinitely)
 
No problem to leave as a whole log, ~1-1/2 x dia long, and seal the ends. Particularly this time of year not a lot of drying will occur. Leave them long for trimming the checks.

The most I do anytime is cut the pith out and seal ends. I never cut rounds etc to store - much more likely to crack w/o bark.

I like to leave a log section as long as possible, seal the ends, then when I get to it decide how to cut it up. Wood stays wet for a long time. Logs need to stored off the ground and out of the sun.
 
One little tip. If you're going to rip into half logs and store in plastic bags, nip the corners of the half logs off. This helps avoid punching holes in your plastic bags. You're not rounding or octagoning or making blanks, just removing the sharp corner.
 
Only got some beech once, and it pretty much shattered as it dried. This was with my once turned bowls. Can't remember if I was using the stretch film back then or not. For your bowl rounds, well mine too, you might try the stretch film around them. Not as messy as anchor seal. I have kept blanks over 6 months that way with no checking. Some thing like maple, which has a lot of sugar in it can mold under the plastic. Have fun with all that wood! Oh, the plastic bag trick works really well also. I did have some 55 gallon trash containers that I filled a time or three and that worked too. Even putting a heavy duty plastic tarp on the ground, stack your wood on that, then fold the tarp over or put another one on top.

robo hippy
 
If you think Cherry splits fast, don't compare that with Beech as it will split much faster and more than just about any native wood, even turned thin it still will like to split.

I got a whole tree worth of Beech from my brother that got cut down in the winter and turned several pieces out of that wood, but is is a real challenge to keep it from splitting.

American Beech.jpg American Beech bowl.jpg American Beech turned thin.jpg American Beech turned thin atill split.jpg
 
Thanks everyone for the advice. The cherry is all halved with the pith removed and ends sealed. Stacked in the shop, and hopefully in the next week or two I’ll be able to cut and rough turn. The beech was all rough turned yesterday and is waiting in a plastic bag for me to coat. I’ll experiment by putting half on the shelf and half in my drying box. Leo, with your experience (beautiful hollow form, by the way), I’ll not have too high expectations for it.9C0DA3C2-554E-42E4-86E0-F8B37C17BFCC.jpeg
 
Lou Jacobs said:
Thanks everyone for the advice. The cherry is all halved with the pith removed and ends sealed. Stacked in the shop, and hopefully in the next week or two I’ll be able to cut and rough turn. The beech was all rough turned yesterday and is waiting in a plastic bag for me to coat. I’ll experiment by putting half on the shelf and half in my drying box. Leo, with your experience (beautiful hollow form, by the way), I’ll not have too high expectations for it.View attachment 48771
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Lou thanks :), maybe you should try to stuff a couple rough turned bowls in a paper bag and set that in a corner on the floor, just forget about it for a while, you might be happily surprised with the outcome :D
 
I've been pretty lucky collecting wood from our property, but I did learn the folly of storing green wood inside a closed pole barn. Some of it got moldy and pretty funky smelling. I just finished moving the still good stuff that was in there, outside again with the stuff that's still in logs. I made the lean-to frames in 4 foot sections, so I can access any of it by moving one or two sections aside. It'll have plenty of fresh air and still be sheltered. I got it all protected just in time for the 12+ inches of snow arriving starting tomorrow night.

WoodStash2022.jpg
 
Go for it. I wouldn't bother trying to make them wider though, unless you have someone to help move them. The first one started at 6'x10' and I immediately found that there's no way I can handle something that wide and tall by my self, when I can't grip both sides at the same time. It was breezy that day and if someone had recorded me trying to handle it, I'd be an unwilling YouTube star by now, but they would have had to censor the audio. 5' wide was still cumbersome, but 4' made more sense and is easier to handle.
 
I got some American Yellow Wood pieces some years back. Every piece I made out of it shattered, as in multiple cracks. I posted, probably here as well, on the forums and found out that is typical for this tree. All woods are different, and some are more different than others.

robo hippy
 
That’s a beautiful load Rusty! It should keep you busy for a while. I’ve always thought disc golf looked like fun. Haven’t tried it yet. Like Forrest Gump said, “you never know what you’re going to get.”

We were in the beginnings of this major wind storm today and I had brought my daughter and her two kids over for lunch. When we left, with the wind howling, before turning off my street I said “just so you won’t worry, I have a chainsaw in the car in case we find a tree has blown over and is blocking the road.” My six year old granddaughter said “that won’t happen Grandpa.” We turned the corner and came upon a large (about 30” DBH) Norway spruce that had toppled over and was engulfing a neighbor’s truck. It wasn’t blocking the road, but we were all incredulous.
 
Karl Loeblein said:
You can also do like loggers by ponding the wood to keep it from cracking. Only use a 55 gallon plastic drum filled with water and some RV antifreeze this time of year. This keeps the wood wet until you have time to get to it. Check Facebook or Craigslist to find plastic food grade barrels.
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I tried using my neighbor's hot tub for that, but they seemed to feel that I was "overstepping my bounds". I mean, it's not like they were using it (right then).
 
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