Box Elder question

[Donny Lawson]

Yesterday I came upon some great "Flame Box Elder" and it was freshly cut.Do you think I can cut some of it into blanks and soak it in DNA for a while and dry it pretty quickly? I'm wanting to make some pens out of some of it.,or some of it anyway.I recut the ends last night and sealed it all up.
Donny

[Mike Golka]

Pen blanks should be able to be dried quite quickly using DNA being only 3/4" square.
Manitoba Maple can have nice flame, I have a bunch of bowl blanks drying now.

[Steve Kubien]

My experience with Manitoba Maple is that it dries really quickly, especially if cut to 3/4" thickness and especially, especially (!) if you DNA it.

[Roger Bullock]

For pen blanks, I'd go ahead and cut them to 3/4 x 3/4 x about an inch over the length needed for the type of blanks you need and boil them. Boiling breaks the inter cell walls and allows the moisture to come out. If you need two blanks per pen, cut your blanks long enough for both ends and cut them apart when you are ready to make your pen. This way both barrels will have the same color with matching grain. Learned that lesson the hard way. Cut a bunch of small blanks once and spent more time trying to match both ends of the pens than I did turning pens.

[Karl Card]

My experience with Manitoba Maple is that it dries really quickly, especially if cut to 3/4" thickness and especially, especially (!) if you DNA it.


what is DNA?

[Richard Madison]

Denatured alcohol. It's perfectly good ethanol that has been ruined by adding some poisonous stuff to it so people won't drink it.

[Bernie Weishapl]

I would cut your pen blanks, dip the ends in anchorseal and let dry. Or I have in a real big hurry soaked a few of them in DNA and let them dry for about 3 weeks.

[Donny Lawson]

After the DNA soak should I wrap the blanks in anything to keep from checking or just let them dry naturally? I'm going to soak them for a couple of hours tonight.
Donny

[Ralph Lindberg]

Yesterday I came upon some great "Flame Box Elder" and it was freshly cut.Do you think I can cut some of it into blanks and soak it in DNA for a while and dry it pretty quickly? I'm wanting to make some pens out of some of it.,or some of it anyway.I recut the ends last night and sealed it all up.
Donny


I guess it's up to me to present the contry opinion

I don't like drying "quick", it can do odd things to the wood. Now, many of the odd things is when you heat dry it, as opposed to DNA.

I don't do DNA, because of the studies the Wood processing industry did, which basically said, while DNA does work (there is a nice Texas A&M U study), it is not predictable. If it's one thing the industry wants, it's a predictable process..

My favorite way to dry wood is: Cut it to size, boil it, seal the ends and let it air dry. If I need to get the wood faster then that, I slowly microwave it