A lot of Ebony is shipped sealed in wax. Why? It won't check until the wax is off and it starts to dry. This from an exotic wood wholesaler. Beware any wood sealed in wax.
Well, heavily waxing the green/wet wood and sell it like that, has been the way big timber fellows and pushed their woods, all over the world. They just don't want to deal with the expense of installing and running wood kilns to dry the wood before selling. This would also minimise their profit, not only in the weight department but also, from the volume of cracked, less grade wood and the extra work/time/expense of getting trimmed, hand selected.
When green wood is waxed heavily, the wood can't breath so, it stops drying, and looks very presentable, what happen after the wood is sold and either dried or people remove the wax and become aware that, they purchased green wood, and unusable for some time, in most cases, these blanks can crack considerably without the wax and before they are ready to be used, unless someone specifically wants green wood to turn green, but those are a very minority among those that buy wood to work with, 95% of turned green wood is turned by those that can access/cut/salvage their own trees/logs and that prefer to turn the wood green (rough turning) to utilize a lot less storage space, a lot easier to turn (no dust) and making the bowls/other turnings to be ready to finish, within 6 months or less...!
Big companies do have normally wood kilns, the value of the wood rises considerably when is kiln dry, some wood dry methods are most efficient in drying the wood properly and with little wastage if any, the problem comes from the medium level wood dealers, they don't have the money to invest on wood kilns but have large volumes of wood they can access so, the only way for them to move that wood fast is to process it into regular blanks sizes/shapes and dump them on the market, not saying much of what can happen to that wood as it dries or even tell that the wood is green/wet, which makes it a, and attempt to deceive, for own gain...!
That's "Business", some would say, not in my books, is not...!
The days wood people would keep the processed wood in stock until dry and ready to use, is long gone, no one wants to nurse wood for 5, 8, 10, 15 years before they sell it, I don't know many, I'm sure of at least one...!
Live and learn...!
PS: The cracks on the first piece are bad news, on the second, if that is all you will get, call yourself very lucky...!:wink:
Cheers
George
