Wood Sealing & Storage ?

[Dan Mosley]

I have a friend that is able to get me a decent amount of ironwood (picture below). My problem is that living in So. Calif the heat can quickly take its toll on any wood quickly, even sealed. I would need to figure out how to store it so it keeps as long as possible.

What i was thinking of doing is to put a Rubbermaid trash can in the back part of a room I have in the house (where its airconditioned and not in the heat) with the ends sealed with Anchorseal.

Other option would be to put the logs in whole form under a covered part of the front yard and just seal one end with anchorseal (top end) and let the bottom end sit into the soil of the yard which is damp. I would have to keep an eye on it so they dont start to rot out but was wondering if that would work better becuase of the exposure to the moisture in the ground.


I have some Mesquite that i cut into blanks along time back (9mo ago) and sealed them with anchorseal and put them on the shelf in the garage but with the heat reaching into the 110's thru the summer and the garage im sure is like a oven constantly baking them....some have cracked out and others are still ok but they are definitely dry out. I can tell when turning them the moisture content can't be much - and when im finished turning and sanding them I do not have to do anything with them to dry further - I actually have let them sit out in the open and they dont check or crack so I assume they are well dried. But, I still have lost quit a few blanks from the heat so I thought I would see how other people deal with the storage issue
Im aware of freezer and old iceboxes but this is not practicle for me to use,
So............anybody have a better idea or thoughts on stroage?

 

[Katherine Kowalski]

I live in a climate with VERY little humidity, so even though it can get hot, the dryness is what can crack my blanks. I seal them with end-grain sealer (twice) then wrap them in plastic, either your garden variety of cling-wrap, or some heavier plastic recycled from other uses. (Garbage bags work well also).

Using this process, I've never had blanks crack, and it retains the "green-ness" for the maximum amount of time. (BTW, I store my blanks on the floor in the shop/garage where it can get hot).

Katherine

 

[Royce Wallace]

Dan, I suspect more has been written on your subject than almost any other. Opinions range all over the place. Personally I gave up long ago and just live with cracking. storing logs in the grater outdoors. At the moment I expect temps. to reach the 100+ range today.
My "method" is to rough turn and use the shavings in a large platic trash barrel to cover and control drying. Works well for me. Of course the size is limited by the size of the barrel and amount of shavings available.
I sure you know one end on the ground with the other end covered by dirt and the whole then under plastic will promote spalting. Whole log drying just does not bring the mosture down to a desired level. Rough turning & drying with control is the only way to go, I believe. Wish I had some of the material you mention--Regards.

 

[DMcIvor]

I seal them with end-grain sealer (twice) then wrap them in plastic, either your garden variety of cling-wrap, or some heavier plastic recycled from other uses. (Garbage bags work well also).

Katherine- I know well the challenges of storing wood in a dry climate, but this strikes me as overkill. What does the end grain sealer in combination with plastic achieve that plastic alone wouldn't accomplish? Just wondering if you've ever done a comparison?

Don

 

[Katherine Kowalski]

Katherine- I know well the challenges of storing wood in a dry climate, but this strikes me as overkill. What does the end grain sealer in combination with plastic achieve that plastic alone wouldn't accomplish? Just wondering if you've ever done a comparison?

Don

Hi Don,
Without sealing the block, the moisture still comes through the plastic wrap over time, drying the block. (Of course, we're talking years here, but sometimes it takes a while to get around to turning some pieces!

I've found that the sealer seals the piece completely in case the plastic degrades, or if holes get torn (inadvertently) when the blocks are shifted around. Plastic-only allows the moisture escape much faster. (These comparisons are done mostly with food-wrap type plastic. Maybe thicker stuff would work better?) Sealer-only also allows a faster moisture escape.

Have you done any comparisons? What have you discovered?

Katherine

 

[Gynia]

For long tern storage of exotic wood some wood dealers use yellow glue to seal the wood. The glue will pretty much stop the transfer of moisture.

 

[DMcIvor]

Have you done any comparisons? What have you discovered?

Thanks Katherine! I always prefer to learn from other people's experience, especially when it comes to storing expensive wood!

I think I've tried everything and found that no one approach is universally successful. I've tried soap soaking, alcohol soaking, boiling, storing in wood shavings, storing in log form under a pile of shavings, rough turning and stacking in a pile, paraffin wax, plastic wrap, sealer, microwave, and doing nothing (which really doesn't work). The only one of these approaches I've completely abandoned is the soap bath, which is just so messy.

There's really two different situations that we're talking about. One is wanting to leave raw material in log or blank form until we want to commit to a particular design. The other situation is rough turning a piece and curing it without degrade so that we can finish it.

In my experience in the first situation, all solutions are temporary and delay the inevitable. I usually seal with grain sealer and try to get to the blank or log before it checks. But inevitably a piece of wood I paid too much for or was really looking forward to turning gets buried, and I find it when its next stop is the firewood box. Your approach may work the best, where you're essentially blocking moisture loss. I would think the wood could still degrade with all that trapped moisture, but it sounds like your experience has been positive.

I've had much better luck with rough turning blanks and then controlling the drying process. Boiling works very well, but is labor intensive, heats up the house (I don't have an outdoor set-up), and sometimes requires a larger pot than I own. Sometimes I'll use the alcohol bath if a piece is small and I need to finish it within a week or 10 days. But for most pieces I paint the outside with sealer and invert the piece on a pile for at least a few months. I still loose some pieces to checking with this latter route, but probably only about 5% of my blanks.

Don

 

[MichaelMouse]

It's not the heat. but the humidity. You control the relative humidity around the piece, you control the relative humidity in it as well. Here's the best science on wood you can get for free. (OK, prepaid) http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/products/publications/several_pubs.php?grouping_id=100&header_id=p

You can be all (rule of) thumbs in your approach to drying, or all the way to dumb (EtOH). All will work, as long as your conditions are not too severe. Find out where you are before starting the journey. You need a hygrometer. That will tell you what various storage options are going to do. I have "doing nothing" down to so fine a thing that I can't tell you the last time I had checks in rough wood. Still air and high humidity are a good combination after the first drying day. If you don't have any naturally available, make some with an appliance box. Use your meter to find a vent rate that moves the RH down a couple points a week and you'll be safe from checks, but might mildew. Bring it down five a week to 65 then 2 a week and you can usually avoid mildew.

 

[Dan Mosley]

Thanks Katherine ---- I think ill try this approach and see what happens -

I understand the method of rough turning and drying but I do not do alot of work that way - I turn to completion - then soak or use other methods for controlling the drying etc.... It is not practicle for me to get into elaborate drying methods although I have read about them and im sure they work.

The logs that im talking about will be 7" diameter and 4' long or more. I have two areas to store the logs after sealing - the garage or inside in a seperate room I have that stays cool. I think ill try the method Katherine mentioned and place them in both areas.

I have read about using the hygrometer, ice boxes, freezers, etc but I was just looking for a simple method........but thanks to all that wrote back I appreciate the advice and learning more .............Thanks

 

[MichaelMouse]

Well, you will certainly learn why timber has been modified in form prior to storage for as many millennia as man has worked it no matter where you store it. Timber in the round, unless you're talking an extremely favorable species like willow or aspen, generally relieves the stress of circumferential shrinkage by radial checks.

Problem is they run from here to there, sometimes everywhere, and we can't avoid them in the end product. Be prepared to do a LOT of defect repair - flaunt or hide - and be prepared to make it structural rather than merely cosmetic. Smart money takes them up the middle if they'll be long, or minimum length over desired use with sealers so that the end grain loss will completely dominate, and the only checks will be shallow. SOMETIMES that'll work.

Thought for you. If the garage floor is concrete, it is going to provide extra moisture buffering under cover compared to interior storage. It'll bring things down more slowly.

 

[Dan Mosley]

Well I think what ill do is to cut them to length and then cut them down the middle to get rid of the pith - seal them x 2 with anchor seal and wrap them.....put some inside in a plastic trash can and some in the garage on the concrete floor and hope for the best. I can at least can see which will hold up longer that way because I will not be able to rough that much out that quickly. Anyway, I dont want to hurry and rough turn alot of wood because that would not be any fun to me. I usually cut some off a log the morning im going to turn and then figure out what i want to do (vessel, bowl etc-). For me its fun to figure out what I want to make and where and/or how to cut it.
There are many variables from what im thinking - temp, type of wood, size, sealing technique, etc - so controlling them to lessen the amount of checking/cracking I understand is not easy.

 

[MichaelMouse]

Dumb or not, your delivery could use some work, Perfessor. There's a chance, a slim possibility, just maybe, that you don't actually know everything.

C'mon, I and others have cited the principles of Physical Chemistry which would have to be overturned for this to be true, and even done the controlled demonstrations for you. As to how to state it, not sure if "you can fool some of the people", or if "some people are fools" all of the time in this case is most appropriate.

Always better to start with the truth, because only there will you find consistency.

 

[Jerry Hall]

Sprinklers

In Northwestern Californian we have for years seen big piles of logs with a huge, sputtering, sprinkler on top. It seems they keep well for a long time, and thru the hot summers.

I have thought of setting up a spray sprinkler tied to my lawn system for my log pile to get me thru the summer and past periodic trips to the cool coast. That kind of goes with the humidity control approach mentioned in the earlier post.

Just been too lazy to hook it up so far.

 

[Dan Mosley]

Thanks - im going to try the simpler approach as i mentioned. Like one of the others said its an old topic that has been hashed forever.

Between the concrete floor in the garage and the back room inside im sure with sealing and wraping im sure something will work better. The old way i was doing it with the mesquite was to cut them into blanks and seal the wood with anchor seal and stacked them up on a shelf in the garage. This worked very well for a period of months (6 or more) but, eventually started to show cracking. Some severe enough that I cut them up into finial blanks and firewood - so I did lose quit a bit......
With sealing x2 and wrapping them im sure they will keep much longer and storing them like I mentioned.
I have read about the ice box - freezer - testing temps - soaking etc - I do not have the space and trying to make it as easy as I can.
Thanks to all for their comments and ill let you know how it goes

 

[MichaelMouse]

In Northwestern Californian we have for years seen big piles of logs with a huge, sputtering, sprinkler on top. It seems they keep well for a long time, and thru the hot summers.

Softwood lumber, of course. Blue stain no defect. Riding along N Beale Rd in the back when days brought the heady wet conifer smell in through the air conditioning. I loved it, SWMBO always choked. Does beat the downwind side of a pulp mill, though.

I would put it on the "don't try this at home" list, especially if I had to buy the electricity and pump the water.

 

[Gary Chapman]

When I seal and put in garbage bags they tend to mold after a couple of weeks and the discoloration goes deep into the wood, not a pretty sight.
Sealing with ancorseal and putting into large paper bags works the best for me especially on smaller pieces that will fit into a Aldi grocery bag. Gary

 

[Jake Debski]

It seems we all progress through the different methods mentioned until we hit the upon what works for each individual.

Plastic bags help if you take the blank or rough turned piece out every couple days and turn the bag inside out before replacing the blank. A real pain if you have more than a couple of blanks.

Boiling, DNA soak seem to work on rough turned wood. I find these can be either to labor intensive and/or expensive or worse dangerous for the weekend hobbyist. Your experience may vary.

Removing the pith from blanks. Just cut a few inches longer than you can safely turn and sealing the end grain I find to be a very short term approach. Depending on climate conditions in your area even covered and in an airy shed I wound up with mostly bottle stopper blanks in as little as two weeks.

I have room, but no convenient way to move whole logs of found wood. I do get to use some of the dead, dying or blow-downs from my small woods. These I leave in place and cut what I can turn a little at a time. The rest go to firewood which also supply the majority of small project blanks.

Finally, what works best for me. Rough turn as much as possible of any timber, found, given, or obtained by other various methods. Cover the outside of the turning with several sheets of newspaper but leave the inside open to the air. Date them somehow and stack in a damp location for a month or two. Eventually moving the turned blanks to a dryer location. This method is a blending of ideas from DNA proponent, forgive me if I'm wrong, David Smith, and Mr. Mouse. My failure rate has vastly diminished since I started using this protocol. Again I'm a hobby turner so don't mind waiting for a few new blanks to dry, I usually have a half-dozen or so ready to turn at any given time.

 

[Jim King]

Processing blanks

From many years of experience producing turning blanks there are two things that are for sure. You are going to loose a good percentage from the chainsaw cut peices thru the processing to a good blank and it takes patience.
I used to cut the large peices and let them air dry for a couple of months in the jungle standing on end, then I would bring them to the factory and sticker them and let them dry a couple more months. Third I would cut them to thickness and let them dry again on stickers. Next they would be cut to the diameter required and then waxed and shrink wrapped and labeled.

Afrer a lot of losses and bad experiences this became my solution. I also boil ALL rough turned pieces and let them dry slowly. More PATIENCE

The photos below will show parts of the process.

 

[Hugh]

I would like to take credit for this but I can't. I just finished up spending some time with John Jordan and he is the source of this.

John says that he always turns wet wood. When he gets a special piece of wood that he does not want to turn right away - he puts it into a freezer. John says that it keeps for almost any length of time and the wood keeps it's color. Too easy.
Hugh

 

[MichaelMouse]

Some of us do that every winter as we harvest. Outside is great until May or more here. Even when the wood is in the whole log.

If you put it into a frostless freezer, you'll get periodic warming to help dry it out, as well.

 

[Dan Mosley]

Jim King.......wow do I wish I had a stock like that to pull from

However I think that your idea of processing and sealing with both sealer and shrink wrap is easy enough to try out. Ill put them on stingers or on the concrete floor and some inside like I stated earlier and see which method or methods will work best for me here in So. Calif............thanks for the information.

 

[Dave Roller]

I'll leave wood in log form with both ends sealed as long as possible. I then cut and split blanks from that log, resealing it if I know I'll not be getting back to it in the near future. I rough turn maybe 10-12 bowl blanks and store them in Heavy Duty Contractor Clean Up Bags which I get at Costco. I try not to leave them in the plastic bags longer than a week. When the bag gets too heavy to drag around, or when I have enough to warrant getting out the Anchor Seal and paint brush, I'll seal the bowl blanks and measure them (interior) across the grain. I store them in the attic of my garage. When, and only when, they no longer shrink across the grain they are ready to turn.

Generally speaking, I can controll shrinking best once the wood is in rough blank form.