Oak - Just Curious

[Ned Ladner]

Just got through reading a thread discussing a beautiful oak bowl a gentleman had turned. That prompted a question I've had for a long time.

Why do we seldom see reference to turning oak?

I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and we have an abundance of oak: red oak, white oak, water oak, willow oak, Live Oak, pin oak, etc. I've never turned oak because I assumed there was something negative about it even though I don't know any specifics. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the tannins from oak might possibly stain the lathe bed.

What is your opinion about turning oak? Am I missing out, or not?

[Robert Hayward]

What is your opinion about turning oak?

Oak is my favorite wood to turn. Like your area, mine is full of various types of oak. Live Oak and Laurel Oak are so plentiful at the tree trimmer dump sites that I am very picky about what I take. I especially like Laurel Oak that has been standing dead for a while. Excellent spalting if caught at the right time.

[Alan Trout]

I use a lot of live oak burl in my pieces. Tough stuff to turn but incredibly beautiful.

Alan

[russell dietrich]

Ned,
I also live in Baton Rouge. Oak is too easy to find. I prefer red cedar or any other wood to oak because of grain pattern (other than spalted oak).

[Bob Bouis]

Combination of factors, mostly because it's a "low prestige" wood, and because it's unpleasant to work. It's very hard and it warps and cracks a lot.

[Prashun Patel]

I think it's wonderful. The prominent grain and Medulary rays that can be present give some wonderful effects that you can't get with other woods. Interlocking rings

It can be prone to cracking.

People don't like oak because they think it looks dated and have an aesthetic prejudice to how it looks flatsawn. My 2cents

[Terry Kilgore]

I enjoy turning oak. Its very easy to acquire in my area and I think it turns nice. I have used it segmented projects and was very pleased with the outcome.

Terry

[daryl moses]

The only thing I don't like about oak is the fact that it is so full of tannins that it will oxidize any metal it comes in contact with fast!! Especially if turning green. I keep a large can of WD40 close and keep the ways of my lathe saturated and keep the shavings wiped off. The black oxidation wipes off easily but if left on for any amount of time it will form rust.

[Mark Greenbaum]

I have both good and bad experiences turning a variety of oak. I turned a beautiful perfectly round bowl from a limb of fallen 365 year old Bur Oak - 2 weeks later it was so twisted it looks hand hewn. And it had been sitting drying on a pallet for 2 years after the tree fell.

Then I've turned kiln dried red oak for a platter, and it ended very well. I've turned a few cylindrical boxes from oak dunnage (what some call piss oak, because of the odor that emanated from it while turning) - and they have stayed very uniform for a few months. The pieces don't like to have beading tools worked on them, and I did get tear out. But the grain and rays are quite impressive.

Oak in a green non-kilned form moves more than most other woods, so turn twice if you're looking to maintain cylindricity. I just haven't had the patience to turn twice so hence my bad green wood experiences.

[Bob Bouis]

To elaborate on why I don't like turning it, oak is hard to cut cleanly and hard to finish. It dulls tools fast, is very grabby with dull tools, and it holds poorly because it's very weak when cut thin. When left thick it cracks. It's when green, oak is corrosive, stains everything black, and makes it sticky.

[Prashun Patel]

i have grown to love the acidic, vinegary, ketchupy aroma of red oak and the creamy, mossy, hay like aroma of white oak. I do believe both turn best when green.

Give it a try. There is lots to love despite (because of) it's challenges.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Ned, I think it really depends on what it is that you want to turn. I have turned oak burl for hollow forms and it is strong enough that you can go pretty thin and not worry. I agree with everyone that turning green is easy but if you twice turn, when it comes time to finish the blank - prepare to go much slower as the stuff when dry turns like concrete!

One thing that I have not seen anyone mention is that the wood is open grain - meaning it basically looks like a bunch of hollow straws when you look at the end grain. Not a big deal unless you are turning a bowl for soup! My experience is that open pores can be a problem on some types of finish as it will weep when using oil based products.

[Stan Calow]

Thanks for this thread. I've never tried oak because I assumed it would be ugly and hard to get a smooth surface because of open grain. Red oak is so common around here that it is easy to overlook.

[Peter Blair]

I second these comments but I am not sure which type of Oak I turned but will never turn green or wet oak again because of the corrosive stain. It was a real pain to clean up my lathe and tools!

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I have turned both Red and White Oak many times, and can tell you from 50 years of turning experience, (unlike the new turners ) that Oak is a nice wood to turn, can be very nice looking and where I like the smell of White Oak, neither smells after it has dried.

If you start with wood that has NO splits when you start turning it, it is not really any worse than most woods for splitting, or even for warping, here are two pictures, one is a small box I turned in 2005, we kept it and after all these years the lid fits snug as it has for all these years, the other is a twice turned deep bowl that shows the shrinkage it did on the rim as I left the outside as it was when turned green, you can see it isn’t much, it is right up there with with most woods and is stable when dried.
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Oak has a nice grain and with the medullary rays it can be really eye catching even when Ebonized with the Iron in vinegar treatment.
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Curly and burly Oak has something special above the regular good looks of Oak, filled with Copper powder or just left as is.
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And again like Steve mentioned, it can be turned thin with no problem, and BTW all these pieces where turned twice, green, dried and returned.
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So if you have some nice green Oak of any kind, take it and turn it, just make sure it has no splits, and that can be hard to detect for all the lines in Oak, so slice a very thin layer of the end an bend it carefully, if there is a split it will show readily.

Oh before I forget, White Oak is good for liquids as the pores are normally closed with tyloses, while in Red Oak the pores are open, so not good for liquids :D

[david privett]

back to the staining of metals with oak has anyone tried to rust treat metal with the tannins kinda like gun bluing? or does anyone have any further ideas on this?

[John K Jordan]

What is your opinion about turning oak? Am I missing out, or not?

Ned,

I love turning white oak. Red oak is OK to turn but I don't like the look as much. The first bowl I ever turned in my life as a rank beginner was glued up from pieces cut from a kiln dried red oak board. This was on an old tube lathe with cheap Craftsman tools and the experience got me really interested in turning.

I think one bias against oak is some people see it as a utility wood in floors, furniture, and cabinets everywhere.

White oak is not as open grained as red oak - although the early wood pores are large, they are mostly filled with tyloses and it doesn't take much effort to make the surface quite smooth.

The figure in white oak can be fantastic and I find it cuts cleanly and finishes nicely. This is from a chunk of almost dry white oak:

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One way to find good white oak figure is to split log sections and look for the twisted pieces.

I can't understand at all the comments about how hard oak is to turn. Maybe it's what people are used to. If used to turning big green maple and cherry (almost soft as butter), yes oak is harder. However, with sharp tools and good technique I don't find it at all difficult or even unpleasant to turn. You want hard, try kiln dried lyptus. Or a variety of exotics. Or dry hickory. (I heard a preacher almost cuss over a dry hickory bowl.) Maybe it's just me - I like hard woods, the harder the better. I love turning dry dogwood and rock maple as well as smaller things from acrylics, aluminum, and brass too.

Again, the tools have to be sharp. And you can't get in a big hurry turning dry oak.

JKJ

[Leo Van Der Loo]

back to the staining of metals with oak has anyone tried to rust treat metal with the tannins kinda like gun bluing? or does anyone have any further ideas on this?

David if you look at my reply (the previous post) you can see the black colored bowl, it was done with the iron in vinegar (rusty nails, or steel wool works fine) Ebonizing species like Oak is real easy.

Just place some steel wool in a glass with vinegar and you’ll see small bubbles coming up from the steel wool as the vinegar is reacting with the iron, wait until the bubbling stops or just wait a day, pour the liquid off into a clean glass and wipe that liquid over you piece, you can do this a couple of times to get it as dark as it will get.

The dark color is quite shallow though, so don’t sand heavily after this ;)

[Prashun Patel]

Leo, I thought he was referring to protecting the ways from staining with some kind of treatment. Did *I* misread?

David, if that was your concern, I personally have not experienced rust or blackening of my ways when turning oak - and I've turned a good deal of both white and red oak, both wet/green. For me, the key is just cleaning the curls off the bed between sessions.

I will also say that my ways were more prone to rust in the first couple years of ownership. Nowadays, they seem to be rust-resistant. I wonder if they've just built up some patina over time. Has anyone else noticed this?

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Leo, I thought he was referring to protecting the ways from staining with some kind of treatment. Did *I* misread?

David, if that was your concern, I personally have not experienced rust or blackening of my ways when turning oak - and I've turned a good deal of both white and red oak, both wet/green. For me, the key is just cleaning the curls off the bed between sessions.

I will also say that my ways were more prone to rust in the first couple years of ownership. Nowadays, they seem to be rust-resistant. I wonder if they've just built up some patina over time. Has anyone else noticed this?

OOps, you”re right Prashun, I didn’t read that post properly, sorry David.

I can’t say I have problems with the Oak tanning on my different lathes ways, they all do have a black patina, but no rust at all, mind you I do wipe them clean and dry when they get wet, with the sap of any wood, kind of like I have my baby colored skin anymore either ;)

The biggest problem I have had with the Red Oak tanning sap was, as I was turning a wet chunk of Red Oak, I kept wiping the sap off of the outboard of my large lathe (it is a thick flat steel plate) and then used that hand to feel the contour of the piece as I was shaping it, well after stopping the lathe I discovered the blackening of the Oak, I tried to remove it, but it had gotten too deep into the open pores on the endgrain parts of the Oak that I gave up on that, and then Ebonized the piece, lesson learned, (Leo don’t you wipe the wood with your wet hands if you want to keep it from staining :o :D)

[Aaron Craven]

I'm currently working through a fair amount of Red Oak I got from a friend. I rather like it, personally. It doesn't finish as smoothly as many other woods because the pores are huge... as in, you can literally blow air through them huge...

Color and figuring can also be quite nice, though it's not to everyone's liking -- especially in the end grain.

For me the biggest problem is finish. I'm still trying to find a finish that I'm particularly fond of... some thoughts:
* Oil finishes tend to absorb into the pores where they sit and don't really dry in a reasonable amount of time... I've actually had a few where I had to vacuum the excess oil back out of the pores before the finish would complete curing.
* Wipe-on poly works well, but the glossy plastic look doesn't pair well with the rustic look of oak IMO
* I'm playing with rattle-can semi-gloss lacquer... not sure yet how well that's going to work out.

For red oak at least, I can't stress enough that the pores are huge... it's something that comes into play a lot as you work with the wood. For example, where you've cut along the grain on the bottom of the bowl, if you've cut across the pores, you won't have a perfectly smooth surface. To me, this is part of the character of the wood, but it may bother some. Also, the open pore structure means that bowls made from this wood are not particularly good for uses with very small particles or liquids (liquids will likely go right through the bowl).

[david privett]

really what I was asking was if I take raw steel (in the white as gunsmiths call it) and put it in a bucket of wet red oak shavings , get it stained well enough evenly if possible. then a light coat of oil would that act like as bluing for rust resistance?

[Justin Stephen]

I too have turned several oak pieces, both from wet and kiln-dried. I made a series of plates from some white oak offcuts recently that I found in the bargain bin at a local wood retailer and the results were lovely. When turning wet, it is one of the warpiest of domestic hardwoods so you need to give yourself a little extra wall thickness on the rough turning but I have not found it to be more likely to crack than most other woods.

[John K Jordan]

really what I was asking was if I take raw steel (in the white as gunsmiths call it) and put it in a bucket of wet red oak shavings , get it stained well enough evenly if possible. then a light coat of oil would that act like as bluing for rust resistance?

I haven't tried that, but it sounds like a good experiment waiting to be done. I'd love to hear your results. :)

JKJ

[Leo Van Der Loo]

really what I was asking was if I take raw steel (in the white as gunsmiths call it) and put it in a bucket of wet red oak shavings , get it stained well enough evenly if possible. then a light coat of oil would that act like as bluing for rust resistance?

I guess I did kind of answer that question, with this ”the Oak tanning on my different lathes ways, they all do have a black patina", even though I was still thinking you were worried about your lathe ways :o

However the shavings would give you a blotchy coverage I’d think, making tannic acid is probably an easier way to “bleu” your metal, it is used for making leather and is carried by the places that sell all the paraphernalia for that :)

[david privett]

I have some sawmilling to do with red oak maybe a lot of dust and some water for extra moisture and some raw black iron from a pipe clamp , and see what comes of it .

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I have some sawmilling to do with red oak maybe a lot of dust and some water for extra moisture and some raw black iron from a pipe clamp , and see what comes of it .

The shiny pinch bars were always bleu at my friends family sawmill, where White Oak was the staple of their operation (Red Oak is not native to Europe)