Drying roughed out bowls

[Don Meyer]

winter finally arrived here in N.E. Ohioand I was wondering where to store my roughed out bowls for drying. I have been using DNA to stabilize my rough outs but my shop is unheated where I store them and I was wondering if the cold was going to affect on how fast they dry. Should I continue to let them dry in the shop or should I can store them in my
basement which is not heated directly but is warmer than the shop? Or does it even matter ?

[Dale Miner]

I've had trouble with rough outs cracking in the basement in the winter months. Even though the rough outs were paper bagged, I still lost several.

We do not have a humidifier, and the air in the house in the winter has a lower relative humidity than the outdoors, and I attribute the cracking to a too fast rate of drying as a result of the lower rh.

I have taken to leaving the rough outs bagged and in an unheated outbuilding for at least a month before bringing them bagged into the basement. I leave them bagged after bringing them in for another two to four weeks. None of the rough outs that were given the unheated drying time have developed cracks. If the rough outs were left in the outbuilding indefinately, they would still dry, just take longer to do so.

Later,
Dale M

[Dick Sowa]

I agree with Dale...the real issue in drying is your relative humidity. Warmth plays a role, but when winter humidity drops to single digits, the moisture in blanks gets sucked out VERY fast. The blank can freeze, and slow the drying, but it will still dry somewhat. I live in SE Michigan, and have left blanks in my unheated barn over several winters. In nearly all cases, the moisture loss over winter is a whole lot more than I would have imagined.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

This is a method that has a lot of followers: Rough out leaving walls 10% of bowl diameter. Coat end grain with Anchorseal to even out moisture loss between end grain and side grain. Seal up in a paper bag and let dry. Good luck!

[Dave Rudy]

John Jordan has a fascinating video == something like the Aesthetics and Properties of Wood in which he discusses drying issues at great length. Humidity of course has a great deal to do with how fast wood dries. But I learned from this video that air moving across the wood has the most to do with differential drying which produces cracking and warping.

Definitely worth looking at this video.

[Frank Drew]

I've had very little loss when I coated the entire roughed out bowl with green wood sealer and kept them somewhere indoors (unheated in the winter); bagging them sometimes promoted mildew so I stopped doing that. I can usually tell by the weight if the bowl is ready to finish turn; if it took a long time, so what?