Wood storage in the cold

[Thomas Wilson]

I saw a local listing for free cottonwood and it turns out the man was taking down some large trees with trunk diameters up to 30-36”. While cottonwood is my least favorite wood to turn (I still struggle to get a totally tear out-free final cut and end up sanding more than other woods and my wife hates the smell and makes me shower after touching it) I am a sucker for large bowls and so when he said he could deliver the trunks to a field next to my house I thought it would be great to be able to restock my depleted stores of large bowl blanks.

I was surprised by how much was delivered. Here is a picture showing about 2/3 of what he brought (I had already cut up 6-7 trunks before this picture was taken):



I have sealed about 25 bowl blanks in the 20-23” range and have them sitting in my barn on a cement floor with the quartersawn cuts stored on a rubber floor in an unused horse stall (partially visible in the background in the picture below).


In the past I’ve had really good luck with cottonwood. I usually seal the blanks with one coat of anchorseal and store them in my basement shop - I have left many blanks there for years before coring them and have never had any checking or splitting. I don’t have room for all of these in my house so I’m wondering if I can just leave these in my barn until I get to them? Will the cold make them more likely to split? Winters here are snowy with temps in the 10s-30s throughout winter. My barn is not heated and has minimal insulation. Do I need to raise them off of the concrete floor?

I hope to finish making blanks in the next couple weeks then slowly rough out and core the blanks throughout the winter but it’s going to take me a while to get these all done. I don’t want to have all these blanks go bad and would appreciate any input from the group.

Thanks, Tom

 

[Ron Solfest]

Wow! You have a lot of work ahead of you... If it were me I would get them off of the floor and allow air to circulate a little bit. That looks like a LOT of shavings to me

 

[Steve Tiedman]

A "floor" of forklift pallets would work well at getting air all around them, keep the bottoms from going funky on you. Got a home improvement or other big box store nearby? They may have pallets for the taking. Construction sites, too. General warehouses, they may have them piled outside, but ask before taking.

 

[Don Wattenhofer]

I personally would leave it in large sizes outside and let the snow cover them.
When ready to turn go out and cut a piece and rough turn as soon as possible then store them inside.

 

[Thomas Wilson]

I personally would leave it in large sizes outside and let the snow cover them.
When ready to turn go out and cut a piece and rough turn as soon as possible then store them inside.

That’s my preference as well but most of the pieces were cut 4-5’ in length and already checking on the ends so I wanted to get the pith out of them and seal them as quick as possible. I will leave the longer pieces until the spring.

Thanks for the prior comments as well. I will move the blanks off the ground and put more spacers between them.

Tom

 

[John K Jordan]

You can even stack layers of wood on pallets. Best to seal well and keep the sun off. Winter is one of the best times for initial drying shorter chunks. Never even saw a piece of cottonwood but around here, when it's warm outside fungi stain and power post beetles can be a problem.

In the worst case, I'll seal the ends and put rounds a few inches off the ground on boards then make stacks with other rounds on top. This does not allow drying but sure stops the checking.

I have a list of south-eastern hardwood trees that need to be removed from our place and plan to take them down in the early winter. Sassafras, Walnut, Black Cherry, Maple, Oak, Hickory, Hackberry, Y. Poplar, Mulberry, Sourwood and best of all, Persimmon (White Ebony, American Ebony), Diospyros virginiana.

When I get a pile of useful wood our turning club sends out a notice and people come with chainsaws, trucks and trailers. I can hold the logs off the ground so they can cut chunks, then load them. If the wood has been on the ground (most of it) I like to use a small pressure washer to clean off the dirt I cut up as much as I can into blanks for drying but I can't use even 1% of it. I do use the sawmill on big stuff - so much easier than chainsawing.



JKJ

 

[Dean Center]

I saw a local listing for free cottonwood and it turns out the man was taking down some large trees with trunk diameters up to 30-36”. While cottonwood is my least favorite wood to turn (I still struggle to get a totally tear out-free final cut and end up sanding more than other woods and my wife hates the smell and makes me shower after touching it) I am a sucker for large bowls and so when he said he could deliver the trunks to a field next to my house I thought it would be great to be able to restock my depleted stores of large bowl blanks.

I was surprised by how much was delivered. Here is a picture showing about 2/3 of what he brought (I had already cut up 6-7 trunks before this picture was taken):

View attachment 80539

I have sealed about 25 bowl blanks in the 20-23” range and have them sitting in my barn on a cement floor with the quartersawn cuts stored on a rubber floor in an unused horse stall (partially visible in the background in the picture below).
View attachment 80541

In the past I’ve had really good luck with cottonwood. I usually seal the blanks with one coat of anchorseal and store them in my basement shop - I have left many blanks there for years before coring them and have never had any checking or splitting. I don’t have room for all of these in my house so I’m wondering if I can just leave these in my barn until I get to them? Will the cold make them more likely to split? Winters here are snowy with temps in the 10s-30s throughout winter. My barn is not heated and has minimal insulation. Do I need to raise them off of the concrete floor?

I hope to finish making blanks in the next couple weeks then slowly rough out and core the blanks throughout the winter but it’s going to take me a while to get these all done. I don’t want to have all these blanks go bad and would appreciate any input from the group.

Thanks, Tom

I have an unheated garage that I store wood in here in SW Montana and from my experience, I don't believe it increases the risk of cracking. That said, I normally try to rough turn bowl blanks as soon as possible and then put them, waxed and bagged, on ventilated shelves in my basement. The stuff outside is usually large spindle blanks that have the ends waxed and need a couple years to dry.

From your photo, I assume you're in the valley below the Wasatch Front, which means you definitely need to get it out of the sun and wind, and can't rely on snow coverage. If the horse is OK with the deal, inside the barn sounds good to me.

Mike Mahoney has made a pretty good living out of Mormon Poplar. Exactly what that is has always puzzled me. Maybe what you have is the same stuff, since cottonwood and poplar are both in the Populus genus, along with aspen.

 

[Greg Carles]

WOW are you planning on coreing any of the larger ones?
Nice deal.

 

[Thomas Wilson]

You can even stack layers of wood on pallets. Best to seal well and keep the sun off. Winter is one of the best times for initial drying shorter chunks. Never even saw a piece of cottonwood but around here, when it's warm outside fungi stain and power post beetles can be a problem.

In the worst case, I'll seal the ends and put rounds a few inches off the ground on boards then make stacks with other rounds on top. This does not allow drying but sure stops the checking.

I have a list of south-eastern hardwood trees that need to be removed from our place and plan to take them down in the early winter. Sassafras, Walnut, Black Cherry, Maple, Oak, Hickory, Hackberry, Y. Poplar, Mulberry, Sourwood and best of all, Persimmon (White Ebony, American Ebony), Diospyros virginiana.

When I get a pile of useful wood our turning club sends out a notice and people come with chainsaws, trucks and trailers. I can hold the logs off the ground so they can cut chunks, then load them. If the wood has been on the ground (most of it) I like to use a small pressure washer to clean off the dirt I cut up as much as I can into blanks for drying but I can't use even 1% of it. I do use the sawmill on big stuff - so much easier than chainsawing.

View attachment 80553

JKJ

I’m very jealous of your wood, John. My in-laws are in Greeneville, TN with a couple hundred acres of forested land and I used to haul back all sorts of wood whenever we’d visit. Since I moved to Utah from Illinois a couple years ago my selection of available hardwoods has become significantly limited.

If you’re ever driving out this way and need to dump a load of wood off just let me know .

Tom

 

[Thomas Wilson]

I have an unheated garage that I store wood in here in SW Montana and from my experience, I don't believe it increases the risk of cracking. That said, I normally try to rough turn bowl blanks as soon as possible and then put them, waxed and bagged, on ventilated shelves in my basement. The stuff outside is usually large spindle blanks that have the ends waxed and need a couple years to dry.

From your photo, I assume you're in the valley below the Wasatch Front, which means you definitely need to get it out of the sun and wind, and can't rely on snow coverage. If the horse is OK with the deal, inside the barn sounds good to me.

Mike Mahoney has made a pretty good living out of Mormon Poplar. Exactly what that is has always puzzled me. Maybe what you have is the same stuff, since cottonwood and poplar are both in the Populus genus, along with aspen.

Yeah, I’m near Provo where CraftSupplies is located and where Mike used to live. He turned a lot of cottonwood and hopefully I’ll get more skilled as I keep practicing, but for now I struggle with tear out in cottonwood - everything that works for me on other woods to eliminate it only seems to help a little. But it is what is most common here and I’m all out of larger blanks so I guess you take what you can get. I do love the look of cottonwood with iron acetate. It creates a beautifully rich chocolate brown color.



I will get the sealed blanks off the floor and add some spacers until I can get them cored and stored. Thanks for your input.
Tom

 

[Thomas Wilson]

WOW are you planning on coreing any of the larger ones?
Nice deal.

Yep. I use the Oneway easy core system and while cottonwood is a bit stringy, it cores just fine. The cored blanks are pretty stable and don’t tend to crack or even move too much.

Here is some I cored a year or two ago. At that time I didn’t have all the coring blade sizes and I was limited in what I could do. Now I think I should be able to get 4-5 bowls per blank.



Thanks, Tom

 

[hughie]

Cold? I look for cold, heat is my problem. and concrete floors are my friend. Funny how things vary with this climate thingy.

 

[Thomas Wilson]

Cold? I look for cold, heat is my problem. and concrete floors are my friend. Funny how things vary with this climate thingy.

Yeah, I didn’t know if below freezing would cause problems but it sounds like it should be okay.
Thanks, tom

 

[John K Jordan]

If you’re ever driving out this way and need to dump a load of wood off just let me know .

I read posts from those with limited wood, makes me want to load up a trailer and drive across the country. I probably burn a lot of wood that others would turn, some hardwoods over 30" in diameter. I recently had so much wood from an oak tree that came down in a storm and no time to contact the turning club so I loaded up the dump trailer with (I'm guessing) five tons of log sections 32" long and 24-28" in diameter. Hauled it to a guy I know who makes his living selling firewood.

One friend from a desert climate came to my farm on her way home from a class at John C Campbell we had both signed up for. She loaded up her station wagon with so much wood, mostly thick slabs from my sawmill, the suspension was totally compressed in the back - I'll bet that was an interesting ride across the country!

Yeah, I didn’t know if below freezing would cause problems but it sounds like it should be okay.
Thanks, tom

Freezing is actually a recommended way to preserve wood over the long term. I once did a test and froze blanks for a few years. I wrapped with plastic wrap to slow any drying. When thawed the wood was good. Not many have extra freezer space but I bought an extra chest freezer just for storing beehive supers full of honey. When I quit doing that I used it to freeze varmints (raccoon, opossum, etc, things that kill my chickens and game birds) to save for vet school classes. But I'll bet lots of people keep a freezer full of frozen animals, right?

In some climates live trees and logs freeze solid. When I contact Woodmizer to buy new blades for the sawmill I have to specify whether or not I want blades with teeth designed for frozen wood.

JKJ

 

[Richard Coers]

I STRONGLY suggest you treat all the wood with a borax based preventative insecticides like Timbor. I checked and you have powder post beetles in Utah. You can quickly get an infestation in barns and sheds in green wood with the bark on. They love sapwood!

 

[Thomas Wilson]

I STRONGLY suggest you treat all the wood with a borax based preventative insecticides like Timbor. I checked and you have powder post beetles in Utah. You can quickly get an infestation in barns and sheds in green wood with the bark on. They love sapwood!

Thanks for the tip Richard. Should I treat both my waxed blanks in the barn and the logs outside?

Tom

 

[Brian Gustin]

Thanks for the tip Richard. Should I treat both my waxed blanks in the barn and the logs outside?

Tom

They'll devour any untreated wood wet or dry. , and if you get them indoors, well best of luck as you'll have no end of trouble getting rid of them , they'll eat into untreated barn wood (beams, etc) if given that chance. However they will generally prefer logs with bark on to any processed lumber, so just be careful about bringing freshly cut logs inside for processing and make sure you clean up and dispose of (outside) any bark which is where their eggs will be found. But if you have barkless blanks processed and waxed, those are likely fine.

 

[John K Jordan]

powder post beetles... You can quickly get an infestation in barns and sheds in green wood with the bark on.

With bark off, too. PPBs can lay their eggs on end and side grain.
You may not see evidence for years in some wood depending on what "food" the larvae find.

... Should I treat both my waxed blanks in the barn and the logs outside?

Wax may not stop the beetles. As I wrote in another message, I once watched a bunch of adult beetles fly from the woods land on and dig through waxed end grain of green sugar maple rounds I was working on at my open garage door.

Don't know anything about cottonwood. Around here they like almost any wood, especially maple and tulip poplar. A friend once gave me some walnut turning squares he had stored outside. I put them in the shop on a shelf near the lathe. One day I heard a faint "scritch, scritch, scritch", tracked down the source, and actually watched an adult PPB eat it's way out of the end of a square. I threw them all outside. So I am one of the possibly few people "fortunate" to see live PPBs on both ends of of their life cycle in wood. Anyone else see these?

On the plus side, I've been processing green wood into blanks and drying them on shelves in three different shops for close to 20 years and have never once seen evidence of PPB infestation in the shop (or in my timberframe house).

I work like this: Immediately after sawing green rounds I seal the end grain, set the wood endgrain down on a tarp or plywood, cover any exposed end grain with another round or a piece of plywood or tarp. Then bring one or two at a time inside to cut and reseal, and dry on wire shelves.

JKJ