Re: cracker house (a not as shameful musing)

Hello Arch,

I'm not George or Bill and I'm not an expert on the subject, but I'm sharing the
following from the November 2005 issue of More Woodturning:

Fast Drying of Green Timber
[Reprinted from the web site of Carol Rix, Nambour, Australia
<http://www.woodturningtips.com/> by permission.]

John Hanrahan, a wood turner from Bribie Island in South East Queensland,
Australia, has been working on cutting down the time it takes to get
green-turned wood dry and finished.

As soon as possible after the tree is cut, John rough turns his bowls to reduce
the volume of wood. He then immerses the work in water. For a number of bowls,
he fills up a 44 gallon drum, places something heavy on top to weigh the wood
down and keep it immersed, and leaves it on average for three weeks. The length
of time he leaves the wood in the water will depend on the wood?s density - the
denser the wood, the longer it should be left. He also puts borax in the water
to stop any mosquitoes breeding.

The theory behind John?s actions is that water will dissolve the resins in the
wood. Once the wood is removed from the water, the water in the wood should
evaporate faster than the resins would have.

There are precedents. Old saw millers stored logs in streams before swing them.
Also, rare timbers which have been felled and ended up in lakes can stay there
for decades or even centuries and when recovered, will still be sound. One case
in point is stands of rare Huon Pine that grew in the Lake Pedder area of
South-West Tasmania. These were flooded by Tasmanian hydro-power developments in
the 1970?s. Today, recovery of this timber is a small industry in itself.
The water soaking the wood may turn dark. This is the resins and tannin in the
wood coming out. When this happens, John changes the water.

On average, the bowls are taken out of the water after about three weeks and
left to air dry for about two more weeks - longer for denser woods. Then, they
are turned and finished with a few coats of Danish Oil - no sealer.

John has kept records of every bowl he has treated this way. Altogether, he has
done forty two pieces from eleven species of timber including black hearted
sassafras, myrtle, mango, eucalyptus burl, camphor laurel, poinsiana, wattle,
spotted gum, jacaranda and Bribie Island Pine. He also included branch sections
of a couple of species. Two pieces that caused problems were a jacaranda branch
with pith in it and a red gum bowl. The jacaranda split down to the pith,
something which this timber tends to do anyway. Red gum is a very dense and
difficult timber to work. It had been cut down and turned the next day. It
twisted after first coming out of the water and John had to return it to the
water a couple of times before finally being able to finish turn it. This one
took a hundred days from start to finish. Most pieces took only two months.

Arch, I have not tried this yet, but it looks to be a simple way to dry wood for
turning and may address the questions you have about the current topic.

Fred Holder
<http://www.fholder.com>

In article <20412-435BA6F0-323@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Arch says...
>
>George & Bill, I'm too irked with Fla. Power & Light (FPL) to go to the
>Forest Products site today. Also I'm too beset with poison oak rash to
>love trees, so I'll ask you two and the other woodsmen here.
>
>Are logs that lie in water for years and preserved by lack of oxygen or
>air, physically similar to their freshly felled state? Has the lignin,
>cellulose, water distribution, etc. changed in how turners need to
>prepare the wood for turning or carpenters for flooring?
>
>IOW, does oxygen deprivation merely put off the inevitable need for
>controlled drying since cracking is not the same as decaying?
>
>
>Turn to Safety, Arch
> Fortiter
>
>
>
>http://community.webtv.net/almcc/MacsMusings
>

.

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