Baking wood

[Gary Breckenridge]

:rolleyes: Today I needed a bit of oak, less than one bf. to finish a small box that I'm making. I had a quick choice to make; bake a short board or head off to Home Despot. I headed off to the big orange box where I generously paid $5.52 per bf for a piece of s4s oak. A month ago I cut some small pieces of birch and cooked them in the oven for an hour at 350 degrees. They sure looked dry when they came out of the oven. They were curved, warped and cupped but that came out when I ran them through the planer.:cool: Has anybody tried this in an emergency and how did it come out? What is the moisture content and is the shrinkage done?:rolleyes:

[Chris Barton]

Hi Gary,

Trying to dry wood this way is futile. All you are really doing is boiling the water on the inside and making the exterior portions of the wood dry. This uneven moisture loss results in the cupping, twisting and checking you saw in you test piece. Kiln drying involves steam to maintain even moisture exchange and relatively low temperatures (160*) and time (days to weeks).

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Never have I tried an oven but I recently roughed out a goblet from wet cherry.........then microwaved it using several defrost cycles with cooling times inbetween. The wood still warped but after I finished turned it, it looked and finished fine.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I have done that in an oven with Rock Elm that was less than a month off the lot. I cooked it for 8 hours at 250-F.
I built my daughter's lewelry box from that home kilned Elm and Teak.

Ya gotta leave it in the oven a long time. Too much heat damages the cells and causes dramatic warping. The wood can later return to it's former position to some degree.

[Charlie Plesums]

Another trick used by turners is to soak the wood in denatured alcohol or dish soap (which contains chemicals similar to alcohol) for hours or a day, then dry it. The alcohol displaces the water, then dries fairly quickly. I have used the alcohol technique, but people who have used the soap technique swear that it works as well, and doesn't impact the finish.

Dave Smith wrote a respected article on "Alcohol soaking method for drying bowls" but it is posted on another forum, so I can't post the link here. Try searching or drop me a note.