Does Alcohol get used up?

[Jack Ganssle]

I've been soaking bowls in DNA overnight. My alky mix is starting to look like something an alien will arise from in the wee hours. At what point does the stuff go bad?

I presume the DNA displaces water via osmosis. If so, one would think the DNA would eventually get oversaturated with displaced water, so it would have some limited lifetime.

Thanks,
Jack

[Ron McKinley]

This will answer all your questions about alcohol drying: http://woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarticle.pl?dir=turning&file=articles_473.shtml
Ron

[Mark Rios]

Alcohol gets used up as fast as you drink it.

[Andy Hoyt]

I've been using this method off and on for the last year and a half or so.

My take on it (highly unscientific, mind you) is that, yup the amount of "fluid" in the bucket seems to diminish with each use.

So my equally unscientific remedy is to add more as needed.

Results do not seem to vary, so I've put my worries elsewhere.

Like, how to pay for the dang stuff.

[Ben Gastfriend]

Dennis Peacock has a really good tutorial on the Alcohol Drying Method on his website, search for a post of his, and visit his homepage.

In one of the pictures, it looks like the Alcohol in the bucket is almost black, from dark woods, but It'll still work.

I just add a new gallon when I deplete some.

[Jack Ganssle]

Thanks folks - this is great info.

Jack

[Rasmus Petersen]

I was wondering, i have see several pictures of the DNA stuff.. the stuff is very murcky.. dosent it color the wood when you use it??

[Dennis Peacock]

I was wondering, i have see several pictures of the DNA stuff.. the stuff is very murcky.. dosent it color the wood when you use it??

Rasmus,

My alky bath is almost pure black from soaking Black Walnut in it. Since then, about 1 year now, I've soaked Maple, Sycamore, cherry, Elm, and Persimmon in that same bath. It only stains the extreme outside of the bowl and comes off when you "re-turn" the bowl after it's dry.

The question has came up about "does it ever get used up". Well, like Andy, I have an unscientific answer to that. I have a crabb tub that I soak all my bowls in, so there's a lot of alky in the tub. Over time, my alky bath kept on smelling like DNA but I spilled some on the shop floor one night (in the summer) and noticed that after about 30 minutes it wasn't dried up and still wet on the floor. This is the indicator that I now use as to when I need to change out the bath for a "fresh batch". How many bowls did I soak before it got that way? I don't know exactly...but I'm pretty sure it was between 40 and 60 bowls.

How long do you need to let the bowl soak? Well, Dave Smith says about 4 hours, but I've gotten lazy and just let mine soak until I go in the shop next, which is about 24 hours. Works good for me but of course YMMV. :D

The shortest time I've ever soaked a bowl was 12 hours.
The longest time I've ever soaked a bowl was 3-1/2 months. :eek: I put a bowl in the bath and totally forgot about it until I got back on my next round of turning wood. :o