Wonderful, Wet Madrone.

[Russell Neyman]

Is there anything more fun than chucking up a freshly-cut hunk of madrone and sending wet curls of wood flying across your shop. A buddy provided several rounds of it over the weekend, and yesterday I turned a 13-inch bowl that is 3/16ths of an inch thick from rim to tenon. Love the stuff.

(If you're not with it, here's an article I wrote a year ago.
https://turnabouts.wordpress.com/)

So, here are a couple of views of this particular bowl:

335124 335125

Now, madrone is an EXTREMELY active wood. It warps, splits, and textures like crazy. Pretty unpredictable. I like the results most of the time but would like this particular bowl to have limited warp. In the past, I've tried various methods of controlling the distortion, and this time I placed it in a clamping press.

Anyone tried this before?

[Jeffrey J Smith]

Russell - to answer your first question, no, there is absolutely nothing as fun. I love madrona. It cuts beautifully and a sharp tool leaves a surface that looks machined and is an insult to sand. The texture of the unsanded surface turned from green feels like extremely supple leather.

I've tried putting finished bowls under pressure to keep them round with very little success. Mostly I like the leathery texture and wild shapes that come with madrona, but when I want it to behave a little better I boil roughouts and let them dry. Works very well on plain, straight grain madrona and burl, too.

I've been using a modified boiling plan that Dave Schweitzer shared a while back. I don't quench them in cold water when they're done boiling, though. Just stack them up hot and steamy on edge until they're surface dry, then sticker and stack on the cement floor upside down until they're well on their way to drying (about a week or two). Then they go onto wire shelves until ready to re-turn.

[Ralph Lindberg]

I'm also dubious that anything can keep un-boiled Madrone from moving which ever direction(s) it wants to.

for boiling, I let them cool in the water over night. The I put them in the green-house (on wire racks) and the wood drys quickly enough

I need to go out today and start processing the burl I picked up at Dave's Saturday.

[Russell Neyman]

Of course, you're right about stopping it from changing shape, Ralph, but I'm having luck limiting the up-and-down (cross grain) distortion. I'm ending up with an oval bowl with minimal "hump" along the rim. Will post
pictures, eventually.

[Reed Gray]

Well, the more it warps, the more I like it.... If you want to restrict the form, without boiling, then it needs to be under compression while drying. So, if you have compression like shown, that will restrict the rim, but I would expect it to cause the wood inside the bowl to move a bit differently that if left just to itself because the drying movement/warping has to go some where. If you want to keep it round, then you need a circle on the outside as well. It is pretty pliable till dry. It will be interesting to see what happens.

robo hippy

[Tracy Tame]

This is just what I need, a group of madrone experts.
I have a fresh cut madrone log cut into rounds, split down the pith and painted with anchor seal on the ends. If I were to rough turn with a 1-to-10 ratio of thickness to diameter and then paint with anchor seal and then store in a paper grocery bag, do I have a chance of any success? Or am I better off boiling rough turned bowls or turned to finish bowls?

[Reed Gray]

Tracy,
Well, no chance... I had a 22 inch diameter madrone bowl that ended up at finished warped to 24 by 19 inches, so warpage will far exceed the 10 to 1 ratio. If you can't sink those blanks in water, you will lose almost all of them, end seal, covered in tarps don't help hardly at all. If you rough turn, you HAVE to boil, steam, or sink in water (note here they do sink because they have so much water in them), other wise you will lose probably every single one. I don't know if you can microwave dry them or not to keep the shape. You have to be kind of weird to work madrone. Birds of a feather type thing...

robo hippy

[Ralph Lindberg]

I've microwaved boiled Madrone and had that work very well. When I tried un-boiled, the wood did the usual "madrone dance"

I've never tried sealing as too many old friends told me to boil or steam or pressure cook.
A big "gotcha" on pressure is that it is really easy to over "cook" the wood then and "temper" it. That is harder then screw up with boiling or steaming.

I'm rapidly coming up on boiling some Madrone... I have an 80 quart (yes 20 gallons) and a 10 quart pot. The 80 takes nearly 2 hrs to get up to a boil, even with two burners running under it.
I'm still laying out my cuts. I plan to boil the spindle stock (up to 3 inches) right away. I will probably put the bowl blanks "to sleep" by sinking them in water.

[Russell Neyman]

I have used the rough-turn followed by boiling method for years and it seems to work better than any other. Burl seems to warp and split less than "regular" grained madrone.

By the way, the current experiment is going as expected: the thinly-turned bowl placed under a clamp is elongating but the rim is still fairly flat. Moisture content is down to 15%. I did zap it twice for 90 seconds in the microwave.

[Reed Gray]

Russell, one that thickness will be dry in about 7 days, maybe 8 or 9 in the winter.

robo hippy

[Tracy Tame]

I have a few 8” to 14” rough turned bows soaking ready to boil. Is 2 hours enough time for the boiling process? Then what? Paint with anchor seal? Store in a paper grocery bag? Or both? Or just leave on a shelf to dry?

[Ralph Lindberg]

The usual rule of thumb is one hour-per-inch of thickness, so two should be fine.
I usually just set mine aside, lately I've been putting them on wire racks in a dis-used green house.

[William Bachtel]

If you restrain it to much, it will crack.

[Reed Gray]

William, if the bowl is under compression/pushing in from the outside, it generally won't crack because you are 'forcing' it together. If you are applying pressure from the inside/pushing out, then it will almost always crack because you are pushing it 'apart'. With some woods you may be able to get away with minimal push, but with the turned hats, it is always blocking from the outside.

robo hippy

[Russell Neyman]

Two weeks along and its dry and very organic, oval and irregular. I'll post
photos after I've polished it.

I'm planning on doing another with the matching wood from the other side of the pith, but plan to boil that one. In fact, I might try steaming it in a covered pot in an attempt to maintain more of the red color. Anyone tried that?