• It's time to cast your votes in the July 2025 Turning Challenge. (click here for details)
  • Congratulations to Michael Foster for "Costa II" being selected as Turning of the Week for July 28th, 2025 (click here for details)
  • Welcome new registering member. Your username must be your real First and Last name (for example: John Doe). "Screen names" and "handles" are not allowed and your registration will be deleted if you don't use your real name. Also, do not use all caps nor all lower case.

Madrone checking

D

David Witton

Joined
Dec 15, 2021
Messages
12
Likes
3
Location
Victor, ID
I got ahold of some wet Madrone last week, and I made my first attempt at working that wood. I treated it like the aspen I've been using, turning a rough bowl with a wall thickness 10% of the bowl diameter. I set it aside to dry, and two days later it has developed some serious checks, one right through the wall thickness. This is something the aspen hasn't been doing - clearly I need to treat this species differently. What would you folks advise - do I need to coat the rough blank with Anchorseal? I'm turning a bowl for a wedding present due in early July, and if I use the Anchorseal I'm thinking I may need to let the blank dry for quite a while - maybe 6-12 months? This wood turns like a dream, and I'm looking forward to using it, but first I need to solve this problem. What are my options?


IMG_4193.jpg
 
Dale Larsen boils his madrone rough outs for double turning about 2 hours.

That stabilizes it so it doesn’t crack when it dries
May be the only way to double turn it.

Madrone is much fun to turn thin 1/8” wall or less and watch it warp
 
Last edited:
hockenbery said:
Dale Larsen boils his madrone rough outs for double turning about 2 hours.

That stabilizes it so it doesn’t crack when it dries
May be the only way to double turn it.

Madrone is much fun to turn thin 1/8” wall or less and watch it warp
Click to expand...
So he turns the rough blank and then boils it? I found a few of his videos on Youtube, but haven't seen anything on double turning. Do you know of a link to something that describes his technique?
 
David Witton said:
So he turns the rough blank and then boils it? I found a few of his videos on Youtube, but haven't seen anything on double turning. Do you know of a link to something that describes his technique?
Click to expand...
See you found a link that works. I couldn’t get the one I found to work. Dale is a good friend and excellent turner.
He does a lot of madrone bowls.
 
David Witton said:
I got ahold of some wet Madrone last week, and I made my first attempt at working that wood. I treated it like the aspen I've been using, turning a rough bowl with a wall thickness 10% of the bowl diameter. I set it aside to dry, and two days later it has developed some serious checks, one right through the wall thickness. This is something the aspen hasn't been doing - clearly I need to treat this species differently. What would you folks advise - do I need to coat the rough blank with Anchorseal? I'm turning a bowl for a wedding present due in early July, and if I use the Anchorseal I'm thinking I may need to let the blank dry for quite a while - maybe 6-12 months? This wood turns like a dream, and I'm looking forward to using it, but first I need to solve this problem. What are my options?


View attachment 44846
Click to expand...
Boiling of the rough turned will greatly abet the cracking-while-drying problem, allowing faster drying without too much risk. Beware, do NOT use a steel pot for the boiling. Madrone has a high tannin content that will react with the iron to produce a black stain. I use an aluminum pot, but possibly a stainless steel pot will work.
 
Last edited:
A year or two ago I got a commission to turn a large bowl (about 14 inches) out of madrone. It was tricky to find some that big, but a friend came across a tree that had just been dropped, so he saved some for me. I boiled everything I got, and almost all of it survived. I have done more since then, and with comparable results. Nothing is perfect, but your odds go way up by boiling it. I've got a 55 gallon drum (surplus - used to hold carrot puree) and one of those big turkey fryer propane burner stand things. Throw the blanks in, fill with water - takes a few hours to get it to boil, then I boil it for a couple of hours. It takes a little less than a full 20# propane tank from start to finish. Take it out the next day - no waxing, just cool and dry on the garage floor. As I recall, I did one more intermediate turn to get rid of some mold that started, but the wood reached equilibrium fairly quickly and I was able to finish turn within a few months. Best technique I know of for madrone.
 
boiling is the only way to go if you want to twice turn. I turn ir amount of madrone and my experience is if I let it cool in the pot, I can pretty much guarantee its going to grow mold. When in roughing mode I just keep throwing roughouts and cores in the pot until I'm done- last one in starts the 2 hour time. Best to boill at least 2 hours and take from the pot when still hot. Set the roughouts standing on the rim on the shop floor. Next day, restack stickered with the bottoms up on wire shelving and let em go. After a couple of days to acclimate you can start finish turning if you don't mind a little warp. The longer you let them dry and equalize the more stable they'll be.
 
My favorite wood to turn because it warps however it wants to, where most other woods, you can at least predict how they will warp. 2 choices with madrone, thin turn to about 1/4 inch, round the rims, wrap the rim in stretch film, dry on the shop floor, and it is dry in about a week, even in the humid winters here in Oregon. I will not take trees that are summer or fall harvested because they crack far more than the trees that are harvested when the spring sap is rising.

You can boil them, which I do not like to do. Main reason is the extra work, and it does muddle the colors in the wood, which generally has a reddish tint to it. Boil at one hour per inch of thickness, and allow to come back to room/air temperature in the pot. Use stainless steel if you don't want your bowl to be black. You can sink it in water for a month or 6, not sure exactly. This is a slow version of what boiling does, but you have to change out the water, or some turner had a waterfall in a stream behind his shop and used to soak his bowls there.

I do prefer to let them dry before I sand them. They are so warped, most of the time, that it is impossible to power sand them at any speed beyond about 15rpm. If you have an articulated arm like the one in the video I did, it will support your hand and arm so all you have to do is pull the trigger. You can spin the bowl with the other hand. I actually prefer this to the spinning wood, at least up to about 220 grit.

"Madrone starts to split when you fire up the chainsaw." "Nope, it starts to split before you even get the chainsaw out of the truck!"

This is a wonderful wood to turn, with almost no tear out. It is one wood where the NRS will leave a very clean surface. It cuts like pear or green dogwood.

Another method I have heard of, but isn't practical for me in the numbers I used to turn, was developed by Christian Burshard, down in Ashland, OR. He puts the finish turned piece in a paper bag, and puts that into a plastic bag. He changes out the paper bag daily. You can dry the bags out and reuse. I guess you can use those desiccant beads for a similar result, but again, that is not some thing I have tried.

robo hippy
 
I have turned quite a few hats from green madrone, full size ones and miniatures and have lost only one due to cracking as I remember.. The reason is that they are turned very thin, mostly less than 1/8 inch . They are air dried in a shaping clamp with no covering or coating.
 
I boil my roughed madrone bowls, take them out of the water as soon as it's not too hot to get my hands in there, let the bowls surface dry and then dunk them in a chlorine bleach solution to deter the mold. It's the only way I've found to keep them from going moldy. I do sometimes use Anchorseal on the exteriors after they've dried from the bleach dunk. It's a lot of hassle, but the wood is so great to run that it's totally worth it.
 
Kalia Kliban said:
I boil my roughed madrone bowls, take them out of the water as soon as it's not too hot to get my hands in there, let the bowls surface dry and then dunk them in a chlorine bleach solution to deter the mold. It's the only way I've found to keep them from going moldy. I do sometimes use Anchorseal on the exteriors after they've dried from the bleach dunk. It's a lot of hassle, but the wood is so great to run that it's totally worth it.
Click to expand...
Kalia, what is the advantage of taking the boiled bowls out early? I have always waited for the water to cool with pretty good success. Molding IS a problem, especially if the wood is bagged in paper before it has dried a bit.
 
Dennis - I can't speak for Kalia, but in my experience, every time I leave blanks in the water as it cools I've gotten mold on the blanks while drying. Dave Schweitzer had advised early on in my boiling adventure to remove them hot and let them surface dry standing on edge on the shop floor. In the morning, they're nicely surface dry and its time to shift them to bottom up, stickered (or staggered) stacks to dry further. Then, after a few weeks they get moved to wire racks to await further turning. This is followed for both madrone and maple burl when wet. As long as I follow his prescription. all is good.

The only time I've had mold was when I left bowls in the soup while the pot cooled down - usually overnight or I found one I missed at the end of the days roughing/coring. I do give them a spray of boric acid solution before they go to the drying racks - kills mold and deters bugs.
 
Dennis J Gooding said:
Kalia, what is the advantage of taking the boiled bowls out early? I have always waited for the water to cool with pretty good success. Molding IS a problem, especially if the wood is bagged in paper before it has dried a bit.
Click to expand...
It might just be my location, but mold has been a massive problem when I've let the water cool before removing the bowls. They take a lot longer to dry, which I think gives the mold spores more time to bloom. When I pull them out hot the surface dries a lot faster, and then after the bleach dunk the mold is pretty minimal.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top