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Thread: Attention Reed Gray

  1. #1
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    Attention Reed Gray

    Mr. Robo Hippy, I'm just trying to bring to your attention that your PM box is full.

    So, I'll just post my question for you here.
    I thought your practice of turning green wood to size, then wrapping the rim with plastic was interesting.
    I turned a green bowl last night but instead of wrapping the rim I dipped just the rim and very bottom of the bowl in melted wax.
    Was just wondering if you had already tried that method but found wrapping was superior.

  2. #2
    Bill, if you turned to finished size, how do you then go about removing the melted wax?
    Len

  3. #3
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    Well right now I am scraping off wax that got where I did not want it. My pocket knife is handling that pretty good.
    Also works great as a hand scraper (on the outside). I sharpen it to 30°(15 and 15).

    Also wondering,Reed, if you bag any of them after wrapping the rim and if so is it wood species or some other factor.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Jobe View Post
    Mr. Robo Hippy, I'm just trying to bring to your attention that your PM box is full.

    So, I'll just post my question for you here.
    I thought your practice of turning green wood to size, then wrapping the rim with plastic was interesting.
    I turned a green bowl last night but instead of wrapping the rim I dipped just the rim and very bottom of the bowl in melted wax.
    Was just wondering if you had already tried that method but found wrapping was superior.
    Until Reed sees your question:

    Below are several time honored methods people use on rough-turned wood and green wood turned to size. This is assuming the blank is face turned and not end grain orientation.

    Some people swear by or swear at certain methods. My own method is one of these. No sense in giving it since so many other methods work for other people. For everyone that says "this will work" there will be another who disagrees. Some say they have zero failures with their favorite method. Some accept a 20% loss. Rarely does anyone describe all the environmental conditions or even the type of wood or wall thickness they are turning.

    If rough turning to thick walls to let dry then turn again to finished size, some ways people use that are successful:
    - seal the entire outside with Anchorseal (basically an emulsified wax you paint on then let dry)
    - seal just the end grain on the outside of the piece
    - seal the entire bowl, inside and out - sometimes better for burls or wild grain.
    - wrap the outside in plastic wrap. If too thick and warm and wet, this can cause mold.
    - soak in denatured alcohol then dry
    - put the roughed bowl in a paper bag or two and forget about if for a couple of months
    - bury the rough bowl in a pile of wood shavings
    - put it in a plastic bag. Every day, take it out, reverse the bag, and put it back in
    - kiln dry the piece. Big productions turners like Glenn Lucas do this. Unless you are lucky this can be tricky since you have to control the heat and humidity according to a schedule.
    - there may be more that I'm forgetting at the moment.

    The idea is to slow down the drying. The faster it dries the faster it cracks, in general.
    Moisture will go right through wax but slowly.
    Melted wax is as good as anything but messy and extremely dangerous to melt if not done wisely. Nearly all wet tropical woods are immersed in hot wax.
    With all of these, weigh the bowl regularly. When the weight quits changing it is dry enough to finish turn to final thickness.

    If turning green wood to finished size, forget all of the above. Just turn it thin enough so the stresses from drying it won't cause cracks. No wax, plastic, or anything. The piece will warp.

    For all of these it's best to have the wall thickness about the same all the way down and around the base. If the base is too thick the stresses due to shrinkage while drying can destroy the piece with cracks.

    All of the above depends on the species of wood, the starting moisture content, and other factors such as the humidity and temperature and air currents in the drying place and the phase of the moon. Eastern red cedar, for example, will behave differently than walnut which will be different than red oak, etc. Too hot and too dry can be bad.

    You might find the book "Turning Green Wood" interesting. https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Green.../dp/1861080891

    JKJ

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by John K Jordan View Post
    Until Reed sees your question:

    Below are several time honored methods people use on rough-turned wood and green wood turned to size. This is assuming the blank is face turned and not end grain orientation.

    Some people swear by or swear at certain methods. My own method is one of these. No sense in giving it since so many other methods work for other people. For everyone that says "this will work" there will be another who disagrees. Some say they have zero failures with their favorite method. Some accept a 20% loss. Rarely does anyone describe all the environmental conditions or even the type of wood or wall thickness they are turning.

    If rough turning to thick walls to let dry then turn again to finished size, some ways people use that are successful:
    - seal the entire outside with Anchorseal (basically an emulsified wax you paint on then let dry)
    - seal just the end grain on the outside of the piece
    - seal the entire bowl, inside and out - sometimes better for burls or wild grain.
    - wrap the outside in plastic wrap. If too thick and warm and wet, this can cause mold.
    - soak in denatured alcohol then dry
    - put the roughed bowl in a paper bag or two and forget about if for a couple of months
    - bury the rough bowl in a pile of wood shavings
    - put it in a plastic bag. Every day, take it out, reverse the bag, and put it back in
    - kiln dry the piece. Big productions turners like Glenn Lucas do this. Unless you are lucky this can be tricky since you have to control the heat and humidity according to a schedule.
    - there may be more that I'm forgetting at the moment.

    The idea is to slow down the drying. The faster it dries the faster it cracks, in general.
    Moisture will go right through wax but slowly.
    Melted wax is as good as anything but messy and extremely dangerous to melt if not done wisely. Nearly all wet tropical woods are immersed in hot wax.
    With all of these, weigh the bowl regularly. When the weight quits changing it is dry enough to finish turn to final thickness.

    If turning green wood to finished size, forget all of the above. Just turn it thin enough so the stresses from drying it won't cause cracks. No wax, plastic, or anything. The piece will warp.

    For all of these it's best to have the wall thickness about the same all the way down and around the base. If the base is too thick the stresses due to shrinkage while drying can destroy the piece with cracks.

    All of the above depends on the species of wood, the starting moisture content, and other factors such as the humidity and temperature and air currents in the drying place and the phase of the moon. Eastern red cedar, for example, will behave differently than walnut which will be different than red oak, etc. Too hot and too dry can be bad.

    You might find the book "Turning Green Wood" interesting. https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Green.../dp/1861080891

    JKJ
    Found this out the hard way.

  6. #6
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    Well now that we are on the subject of Reed and his mail box: Reed, I sent you a check in payment for the carbide rods you offered. It was never presented and my bank has cancelled it. Let me know how to get the money to you and I will be glad to do so. Best regards,

  7. #7
    Not slow, not fast, just halffast.....

    The thing with adding any sealer to once turned bowls is that the sealer has to come off, so I don't do that. The rim, and especially the end grain part is the most vulnerable to cracking, and that is why I use the stretch film around the rim. As near as I can tell, I was the first one to try that. I don't wrap maple though because mold grows under the plastic, most likely because of all the sugar in the maple. Some woods are easier to dry than others, and my favorite is Pacific Madrone which starts to crack when you get the chainsaw out of the truck... I have to wrap the rim with it and for some reason, trees heavy with spring sap/water are less prone to cracking than mid summer and fall cut trees. No idea why. The best bagging method for the Madrone that I have heard of was from Christian Brushard who will be at the Portland Symposium. He puts the bowl in a paper bag, then puts that into a plastic bag. Change out the paper bag every day, and they can be reused when they are dry again. That method is not practical for me due to the quantity that I used to turn. I do start them out on the shop concrete floor for a couple of days, then up onto a rack where they are dry and done moving in 7 to 10 days max. I have also taken to putting an ogee right on the bowl base/bottom before coming up the walls because that does a lot to help keep the bottom an even thickness through the transition area.

    Terry, I will clean out the message box shortly.... or you can e-mail me direct too.... I am building new house and shop, and running more disorganized than normal....

    robo hippy

  8. #8
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    Madrone?

    Quote Originally Posted by Reed Gray View Post
    ...my favorite is Pacific Madrone which starts to crack when you get the chainsaw out of the truck... I have to wrap the rim with it and for some reason, trees heavy with spring
    Have you ever tried boiling madrone? Pete Keckle (Big Monk Lumber) sells madrone turning stock when he can get it and said without boiling it is unruly. Jim King from Iqutos Peru told me the same thing about many of their tropical hardwoods. Every bowl is rough turned then boiled for several hours before drying. (They boil in a 55 gal drum over a wood fire.) Years ago boiling used to be a common treatment when bowl turning but I haven't heard much about it lately. Apparently the heat softens the lignum and lets drying stresses relieve themselves instead of severely warping and cracking the bowl.

    For anyone interested, here are Steven Russell's articles on boiling:
    Boiling Green Wood to Reduce Drying Degrade, part 1 and 2:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20170820...reen-wood.html

    Tips for Better Boiling:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20170820...-protocol.html

    Also, he talks about other methods such as paper bags and sealing with wax in other articles:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20170820...-articles.html

    (Stephen's articles are in incredible resource. Apparently his web site is gone but still available in the internet archives.)


    JKJ

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by John K Jordan View Post
    Have you ever tried boiling madrone? .... (Stephen's articles are in incredible resource. Apparently his web site is gone but still available in the internet archives.) JKJ
    John, yes for some reason Steve's web-site is gone, and with it a great resource. I can recall getting his batch e-mail's about some new thing he had figured out, I miss that a lot. I also miss Jim King's info and miss the woods he used to export. I see a fellow in Peru posting using those woods and think about Jim when I do (FaceBook group) But on Madrone, ya it's nearly impossible to handle with out heat treatment. Some "old timers" pressure cook the wood, works similar to boiling only you can accidentally temper the wood. Cook Woods uses pressure cooking. Another treatment is steaming at standard pressure. Here you can't temper the wood. Glimer and some other sellers use steaming. Steaming works better then boiling for blocks of wood. Boiling takes too many hours for a 6 inch thick block Most of hobby types boil. My small boiler is 12 quart, the big one is 80 (yes 80 quarts, it's huge) Speaking of which, Saturday is the delivery of this years order of Madrone burl for the clubs in the Seattle area, Jay is bringing his usual trailer load.
    Making sawdust mostly, sometimes I get something else, but that is more by accident then design.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ralph Lindberg View Post
    John, yes for some reason Steve's web-site is gone, and with it a great resource. I can recall getting his batch e-mail's about some new thing he had figured out, I miss that a lot. I also miss Jim King's info and miss the woods he used to export. I see a fellow in Peru posting using those woods and think about Jim when I do (FaceBook group) But on Madrone, ya it's nearly impossible to handle with out heat treatment. Some "old timers" pressure cook the wood, works similar to boiling only you can accidentally temper the wood. Cook Woods uses pressure cooking. Another treatment is steaming at standard pressure. Here you can't temper the wood. Glimer and some other sellers use steaming. Steaming works better then boiling for blocks of wood. Boiling takes too many hours for a 6 inch thick block Most of hobby types boil. My small boiler is 12 quart, the big one is 80 (yes 80 quarts, it's huge) Speaking of which, Saturday is the delivery of this years order of Madrone burl for the clubs in the Seattle area, Jay is bringing his usual trailer load.
    For Steve's website (after someone pointed out it was still available on the Wayback Machine) when I get time I go to the archived copy, open an article, then save an HTML copy. This puts that article on my computer which is also a lot quicker to access since the internet archive is not exactly speedy. His articles are wonderful. I also wondered if something had happened to Steve but I a little sleuthing found him apparently still active in a Texas woodturning club.

    Madrone: Yoow I wish I was a club member in Seattle! The only madrone I've ever had hands on was from Keckle at Big Monk, turning squares about 3x3 or so.

    I wondered about Jim and asked around several years ago and no one knew what happened to him. I learned about his passing when I noticed a Pink Flame entry in the Hobbithouse web site:
    http://hobbithouseinc.com/personal/w...0flamewood.htm

    I got a big block of Pink Flame from him as well as some big blocks of other woods. His posts on another forum were always interesting. I remember him being amused at the market for Purpleheart in the US - he said it was used for floor joists where he lived. And the most sought after wood for upscale homes was knotty pine from the US!

    I would love to get some more Pink Flame. I cut my big block up and made smaller things. All I have left now is scraps.

    pinkflame.jpg

    JKJ

  11. #11
    I haven't boiled my Madrone. For one, I prefer the warped shapes, and also, it muddles the colors so they are not as bright or varied. I did tease Dale Larson once. I won one of his Madrone bowls that he did at a demo and told him, "Dale, there is some thing wrong with your bowl. It isn't warped." I do know the steaming works, but never worked on that one either. Just an extra production step.

    robo

  12. #12
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    The turner from Peru does a number of things from Pink Flame, I have a tiny bit left...
    I also have never seen it available from any other seller in the US

    We pay about $1.25/lb for Madrone burl. That is wet/rare wood. We still have to cut it, shape it boil (or let it warp like Robo does), etc.

    One of the Olympia area turners uses Dave's beading tools to "bead the heck" on his bowls, then lets them warp. They look like a rope bowl when dry, very impressive.

    For regular Madrone, well, I just picked some up off the side of the road, the county had cut it down for road work.
    Making sawdust mostly, sometimes I get something else, but that is more by accident then design.

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