"Busted"

[Donny Lawson]

I got to looking around the shop this morning and noticed alot of my bowl blanks and drying wood is splitting and busting all over.:(:( It has been well anchorsealed but its not stopped the splitting. I've got alot of time and effort into these things and to watch them turn into firewood is heartbreaking. I know my shop stays around 80 or so during the day but I have no other place to store it. Here is a bowl I roughed out a few months ago and I was looking foward to finishing it up but now it looks like it will become pen blanks if I can squeese some out of it. This is just one piece. I have hundreds of pieces placed throughout the shop. Any solutions are very welcome.

[Dennis Ford]

That looks like it might be dogwood, if so it is a difficult wood to dry. Also this is a difficult time of year for drying. The wall thickness looks about right on this one. My suggestion for future roughouts is to make sure the bottom is no thicker than the sides (you may have done this already). Any existing rough-outs that you have doubts about, can be re-turned now into either finished thickness or lighter rough-outs if there is enough wood for that. A few failures is normal but if you have many like this, they are drying too fast or are too thick.

[Jon Nuckles]

Donny, I think that a piece with walls that are close to vertical is also more prone to cracking than one with a more gentle slope, so you might want to take special care with those. You didn't say what you do with your roughouts, but I would wrap them in paper at a minimum for the first few weeks or month of drying. I have had some failures lately with that method and am thinking of using shavings in the bag with the roughouts for a couple of weeks to retard drying even more for that period. If all else fails, you could always anchorseal the roughouts; with hundreds of pieces it would be a pain, but better than losing a large number to cracking.

[Roger Wilson]

You might look into building a kiln, which is designed to handle higher temps as part of the drying process.

http://www.woodturningonline.com/Turning/Turning_articles.php?catid=30

[Jim Burr]

You should be able to put a clamp on that, some epoxy and your good to go!;):p I'm finding that saran/plastic wrap just on the outside rim is doing a great job and it's a lot cheaper than Anchorseal

[robert raess]

I feel your pain,I had some really nice burls, still in the rough.I cut them and sealed them 2x's in oct. of 2010.they were indoors with plastic covering them.When i went to cut them for use,it was like cutting a loaf of bread;slice after slice after slice had stress cracks until there was no more loaf. In my case, i think it was the stress inherent in burls.In your case, i was taught when you turn a piece to your thickness to wax it and put it in a plastic bag with a paper towel inside and change the paper towel a couple x's a week.Well when you get a bunch of pieces going on, that 's not real easy to keep up with.If you wax it, you have to turn all the wax off to avoid contamination if you are using a film finish.The minimum i do with good success is, each piece in it's own plastic bag with a paper towel, sometimes i even wet the paper towel and put it in the bag.You may get mold, but usually on the surface, and of course you have to keep in mind i live in Az., with relative humidity sometimes in the single digits.Also i lean to woods that are more dimensionally stable, unless movement is what i want....Rob

[Joe Adams]

Donny - Are you familiar with Steven Russel's boiling protocol? www.woodturningvideosplus.com/boiling-green-wood.html

[Bernie Weishapl]

Donny I had the same thing happen and my shop stays between 80 to 90 deg when I don't have the A/C running. Everything was cracking. I use anchorseal on all mine now and moved them to where it is around 68 to 72 deg on the floor. I try not to stack them more than 3 ft off the floor. After about 1 1/2 yrs now cracking is very seldom.

[Donny Lawson]

My roughed out bowls are anchorsealed on the endgrain and put in a paper bag with shavings and stapled shut with the date on the outside but this still happened.

[Jon Nuckles]

It sounds like you are doing just about everything possible to slow moisture loss and prevent cracking, other than maybe DNA or boiling, which I have not tried. Is the problem happening with all types of wood? You say your shop stays about 80 during the day; is that because it is air conditioned? Mine probably gets to 100 on hot days, but the humidity stays high as well, so I don't think it speeds up drying too much. I may try plastic wrapping the rim of my bowls, as Jim Burr suggests. Harvesting the wood and turning it into blanks, let alone rough turnings, is too much work to lose many to cracks. Hope you find a solution . . . and share it with the rest of us!