Green yellow pine

[Luke Townsley]

I've got a couple of nice chunks of very green southern yellow pine to turn into bowls.

When I cut it round on the bandsaw a couple of weeks ago, it oozed sap in droplets all over the freshly cut surface.

I want to finish it with a simple clear penetrating oil/wax finish, but don't quite know what to do with the sap that is sure to seep out.

What are my options? Am I pretty much obligated to wipe it down with a solvent before finishing?

[Fred Perreault]

That stuff is sure to be tacky. It leaks sap from 100+ year old timbers. I have turned some items from old timbers from demolition in Boston's downtown area, and it was not worth the trouble. Solvent might cure the surface ills, but wouldn't do much for what time will create. At least that's how I see it... :)

[John Keeton]

There sure is a lot of wood in the world to be stuck turning wet yellow pine!! Just my thought!

[Scott Crumpton]

If you really want to mess (pun intended) with yellow pine, you need to set the sap by kiln drying it. I'm told that leaving pine boards in a hot attic for several weeks during the summer works. May cause some checking if the wood starts out too wet.

[Ron Stadler]

Lol, well from my experience when I started turning I grabbed my first wood of the side of the road and wrestled it into my pickup, the pieces were quite large, some being 3 feet long and 13 to 15 in diameter, whew. Anyway I thought wow, Iv'e got some prime wood to get started with and decent size to make some larger bowls, Well I took it to our president of our club to show him the great stuff I just picked up and wanted to see if he wanted a piece, after all I had a whole truck load, lol, he told me it was a sort of pine, I forgot exactly what it was, but it is full of that sap and no good for turning. It now all lays at the bottom of my yard, so maybe I'll try it for campfire wood, hope it at least burns.

[Jon McElwain]

It now all lays at the bottom of my yard, so maybe I'll try it for campfire wood, hope it at least burns.

Oh it burns all right - burns like a candle!!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Make sure you have lots of mineral spirits to clean up your tools and lathe. I turned one piece of yellow pine and a piece of ponderosa pine. Never again.

[Jon McElwain]

I wonder if soaking a thinner bowl in DNA would have any effect on the perpetual sap ooze??

[Thomas Canfield]

There is the sap issue and good comments about using mineral spirits to clean it up - daily if not more often. I made several bowls about 15" diameter from some fresh cut pine and used a Danish Oil / Polyurethane varnish blend (4:1) wipe on finish after wiping the sap off with MS to start. The bowls were given as fruit bowls and appreciated. I still have a smaller piece about 4"D x 5"H that has a translucent section in the side from the high sap heart wood of a limb. You may be pleasantly surprised with the result. My wife wants me to find some more and do some more, and I do live on the edge of the Piney Woods so just need to wait for a storm or someone removing trees in neighborhood, but it is not ideal. I had less problem with the sap on the pine than the tannic acid sap in Live Oak.

[Rich Aldrich]

Luke,

Scott is right, the pitch needs to be set. I havent messed around with pine much, but I did turn a spruce burl. After putting finish on the burl, you can still smell the pitch. This burl dried in my cousin's garage for 2 years, but I know the pitch is not set. I have a wood boiler which has a compartment on the back where the water lines go in and out which should work as an place to set pitch. I plan to try this on antoher air dried spruce burl, but it will be a while. The burl is just starting to dry.

I remember cutting balsam for my dad (family logging business) when I was in high school. We would pile the pulpwood after it was cut to length. After a day's cutting, your pants were so full of pitch that they could stand by themselves after you took them off.

[Curt Fuller]

I've turned several pieces of Ponerosa Pine, which is about the same thing as yellow pine. After the first, I swore I wouldn't do another. But it was from a historic tree in our town and for a good friend of my wife's so I was overruled. The wood I used had been cut for about a year before I turned it. It's just plain messy. No getting around that. It sure smells good while you're turning it though. I wasn't able to get any kind of decent finish with anything but Briwax or lacquer. The person I turned them for preferred the look of the Briwax finsh. But prior to waxing I used several different solvents to 'wet' sand and get rid of most of the surface stickiness. I used plain old paint thinner, turpentine, and WD40. WD40 worked the best and I was able to get a fairly decent surface. But I went through a lot of gummy sandpaper. I then let the wood air out for a few days and applied a heavy coat of Briwax and buffed by hand. They seem to be holding up pretty well and don't have any 'ooze'.

[Steve Vaughan]

Yup, I think the kiln is the way to go to set the sap. But I do wonder this, maybe if you don't mind the mess turning some green, you might rough-turn a bowl or two leaving the standard 10%, and maybe even a little less with pine(?), and then find a way to dry it out. Maybe bag it in some shaving and wrap it tight, and let it dry a bit slow. When most of the moisture is gone, then maybe you can dry it a bit more aggressively with heat to set the sap? Just wondering. Maybe if small enough, and with a few paper towels, you could use the microwave?

[Brian McInturff]

Wow, what timing. Several years ago on one of my job sites we were clearing was an old large 5' stump burnt(and not in the past 25 years). It looked really old growth probably from over 100 years ago. Our little D4 dozer wouldn't budge it. So I got the Stihl out and cut off a big chunk. I could tell it was some type of pine, maybe Loblolly, but not sure. Well this past weekend I ran across that chunk in my storage shed and decided to cut a piece off and turn it. So far I've only formed the outside shape. I had to stop because of the Turpentine odor from the wood(Turpentine comes from Pine trees). I'll finish it up when I get another Airstream in the next month or so. That pine had the tightest grain I've ever seen in a Pine tree. As mentioned earlier, Mineral Spirits is the best and cheapest thing to use to clean the sap off of everything. I was surprised this chunk still had sap in it after having been struck by lightning at least 25-75 years ago(location makes me believe this), having been burn't to the point the outer 3-4 inches was crystalized charred wood, and then it's been in my shed for the past several years.

[Luke Townsley]

I appreciate everyone's input. As far as the smell of yellow pine, I hate it, but I have seen a couple of pictures of SYP bowls that looked sort of attractive. They weren't my favorite pieces to be sure, but I'm always up for a challenge and I do have a design in mind for one of the pieces that I think will look nice.

To set the pitch, it seems like they heat a kiln to about 180F. I don't know at exactly what temperature the pitch sets, but I do believe it requires a certain temperature. I could "cook" it in the oven like a turkey, but it seems like that would make the wood a lot more brittle and even less fun to turn. Steve's idea or roughing out the blank and then microwaving it after it dries some sounds like it would be worth trying and might not make the wood as brittle.

I have heard that a thin coat of shellac will keep resin from oozing through, but on a turned piece, with as much resin as this one has, I don't know if it would work unless I got rid of a lot of the resin. For that, wet sanding with a solvent sounds like an idea worth trying too, but it seems a lot safer on these pieces to lock the resin in with heat. Somehow, I can't quite picture SYP with a french polish...

[Brian McInturff]

I'd be a little leary of using a microwave. Considering it cooks from the inside out I'm not sure what effect that would have on the pitch. Hopefully someone has tried it and can comment on their results.