Freeze Drying?

[Peter Blair]

Has anyone had any experience freeze drying rough outs?
I have quite a bit of spalted maple that is soon going to get punky.
I would like to rough out as much as I can and wonder if anyone has experience with freezing bowls and hollow forms? I have had mixed success freezing blocks of wood and am hoping someone here can steer me in the right direction.
i am contemplating ether just tossing them in my chest freezer or coating either the end grain or the complete rough out.
I usually boil my roughouts and am just trying to determine if freezing might be a substutute for boiling?

[Roger Chandler]

I have no personal experience with freezing wood. That being said, I did speak with one very experienced bowl turner who told me about the only way he knows of to get most pieces of wood preserved without cracking is to freeze them.......he said he gets about 98% success rate by freezing.

Now, whether that would be any better or less trouble than boiling roughouts.........that I do not know. :confused: We have one turner in our club who boils his roughouts from time to time and has good success with that method as well.

[Fred Belknap]

Peter I experimented with freeze drying. I cut two exact size blocks of wood and left one on the work bench and the other I put in the freezer. I weighed both and they were pretty close. I don't remember how long I left them but it was like maybe three months, they both lost weight and cracked. The one laying on the work bench lost the most weight. I am kind of in the same boat as you with some wood. It is cut in blocks and in the dry, some of it is spalted. I have lost some wood leaving it to long in the block, it cracks. What I have been doing is rough turning and coating the whole rough out with Anchorseal. I then put it an old building without any windows, stacked on a bench. I have about 30 pieces there and another 25 or so in the shop. So far I have one crack and it had the pith of a large limb in it. I do soak my bowls in alcohol over night before coating them with Anchorseal. It has been working pretty good for me. I tried boiling and it worked good but I didn't like the process very much, wife didn't either as I used the kitchen stove. I have a few more crack using alcohol than I did boiling but not many. One big draw back to alcohol is the cost, at $16 a gallon it soon adds up. I do a few hundred bowls a year it and definitely adds to the expense. I think just about every turner has a different opinion about drying their work. This works pretty good for me.

[Dennis Nagle]

I am experimenting with soaking the rough outs in PEG. They need another month in the vat, then I'll put them in a very small space with a dehumidifier.