Bowl Turners, How About A Test?

[Keith Outten]

Anyone who lives in my vicinity and has a couple of bowl blanks prepared who would like me to put them in the top of my Ebac kiln get in touch with me. I've never done this before but would like to try it and see what happens.

My Ebac dehumidification kiln is full of eight quarter white oak. I have a little room at the top and could set four of five bowl blanks that have been prepped for drying in the top of the kiln. My kiln uses a very slow drying schedule and very little heat so the quality of lumber is much higher than conventional drying. I never coat the ends of boards to prevent cracking...it never checks or cracks if I use very wet lumber, no air drying time at all.

I am probably looking at least a six week drying schedule (8% MC) for the oak. I do have a large ships porthole installed in the end of my kiln that I use to spotcheck each load and do moisture checks periodically so I can check the bowl blanks during the drying cycle. Basically my goal is to see what happens to the bowl blanks and more importantly how high the quality of the blank is after a slow drying cycle. I would like to try a few different species of wood as well and since I am not really much of a turner I don't have any bowl material in my current lumber inventory.

Anyone interested in taking part of this experiment let me know.

[John Miliunas]

Anyone who lives in my vicinity and has a couple of bowl blanks prepared who would like me to put them in the top of my Ebac kiln get in touch with me.

Anyone interested in taking part of this experiment let me know.

...Shore do wish I lived closer! Sounds interesting. :cool:

[Barbara Gill]

Anyone who lives in my vicinity and has a couple of bowl blanks prepared who would like me to put them in the top of my Ebac kiln get in touch with me. I've never done this before but would like to try it and see what happens.

When I first got into turning I made a bowl kiln from an old commercial freezer, a timer, a light bulb and a computer fan from Radio Shack. Instead of allowing the rough bowl to dry for 6-9 months, I would dry them in about 2. The results were ok but as I progressed as a turner iI accumulated more and more roughed out bowls so that waiting is not a problem any more. My bowl kiln stands unused.
I prefer to turn a bowl from a green blank for several reasons. One is that when you remove the wood, you relieve stress. By allowing the roughed out bowl to dry at a slower pace it gives more time for this stress relief to be resolved. Another reason is that it is easier to turn green wood than dry.
IMHO it would seem to me that turning a bowl from a kiln dried blank would possibly result in more movement of the finished product. I know that woodworking supply stores often sell dried blanks at a very high price. The ones I have seen have been quite small (i.e. 4x8x8) and often cupped. I saw a dry maple blank with a little figure that when broken down into bd.ft. was priced at $18/bd.ft.