Punky River Birch

[Allen Schmid]

Looking for some input from you all on the best way to handle some punky wood that is giving me problems. Sorry no photos but here is my description of what's going on. I have a 15" blank of river birch that has some very punky areas...a few others seem really dry, almost brittle. I used a bowl gouge to rough the outside, had a lot of soft wood and tried to reshape the piece to get rid of most of it. At the same time ran into this brittle dry sections that almost chipped out. I switched to a heavy, very sharp straight scraper and it did seem to work better, still some trouble spots. sanded it down abit and put on some antique oil to soak in, maybe set things up abit and try it again later. I know some of this is certainly my technique or lack of one but wondered what others have work for them. Won't get back out to the shop til Sunday...maybe the oil will help a bit.
Thanks,Allen

[Mike Peace]

This thread shows the two techniques I tried. http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=130434
If it is too punky I agree with John Jordan, "Life is too short to turn crappy wood."

[Allen Schmid]

Mike,
Thanks, thought I had seen another post recently. Ya, sometimes you ahve to cut your losses before bad things happen. I'll read it over again.
Allen

[David Walser]

I, too, agree with John Jordan's sentiment, "Life is too short to turn crappy wood." However, sometimes you have a special piece of wood (say from the tree that grew in front of grandma's house) that you just have to make something out of, so it's nice to develop the techniques necessary to turn such wood. Here are a couple ideas how you can stabilize a piece of punky wood:


Use Minwax' High Performance Wood Hardener. Minwax makes a product, High Performance Wood Hardener, specifically for stabilizing punky wood. Soak your blank in the product (preferably in a covered container). The stuff penetrates fairly well, but you may need to reapply the product a time or two as you turn down your blank. Here's a link: http://www.minwax.com/products/wood_maintenance_and_repair/high_performance_wood_hardener.html
Use thinned wood glue. Soak your blank in a 50/50 glue/water mix. The thinned glue, after it dries, does a good job of stabilizing punky wood. This approach is less expensive than Minwax' High Performance Wood Hardener, but it does not penetrate as well.

Hope this helps.

[Allen Schmid]

Thanks Dave,
I might give the thinned down glue a try as I have no "connection" to this piece of wood other than it might be interesting to see how the glue works on it. Thanks for the reply.
Allen