I used to turn a fair amount, mostly spindle work for furniture and almost always dry wood. I'm getting back to it now and recently had a great tutorial on bowl turning in green wood. In my enthusiasm I made up about 30 bowl blanks from cherry and apple trees that came down recently, bandsawed them to rough circles and coated with Armorseal. I've been roughing out a couple of them a day, putting them into paper bags with fresh shavings to dry for final turning and finishing.
Both my stash of blanks and the rough turned bowls are growing enormous fur coats of mold, over the course of about a week. Looks like mostly Neurospora with some Aspergillus, so just garden variety stuff so far. I'm not very worried about it from a health point of view. I am concerned about what it will do to the wood and what it says about my drying conditions. I know I want them to dry slowly to avoid cracking, but is this too slow?
Is this a problem, or just par for the course? Both the wood and shavings are quite wet. The apple, in particular, has so much water you'd think it had come from a submerged log. I've thought about dunking them in a bleach solution to slow the mold down, but also wonder if I should let them air dry more before packing them away.
Your thoughts will be appreciated.