Buying Wood

[srs64]

I have been looking to buy some bowl blanks to turn but just about all auctions say (Has been cut Green and sealed with wax) Correct me if I am wrong this is green meaning wet and it need to dry before it can be turned?

Thanks for any in sight you might have.

 

[Ted iin Michigan]

Yes - it means wet. No - you do not have to dry it first. Two schools of thought regarding this:

School 1 - turn it green (wet) to final shape and allow it to dry. Most likely it will warp and twist as it dries. How much is not predictable and depends on a bunch of factors such as species, where in the tree the wood comes from, what time of year it was cut, etc.

School 2 - turn it to rough shape, allow it to slowly dry then remount it and turn to final dimension. Much less likely to warp but the drying process takes a rather long time which also depends on a number of factors.

There are a number of variants of the drying process (alcohol immersion, boiling, microwave, etc)

Sorry, you asked what time it was and I told you how to build a watch.

 

[KenV]

If you want rough turned bowls to finish

Buy Rough Out Bowls here. Find the perfect wooden bowl that is ready for you to create your finished bowl.

Dale is good people ---

 

[JimB]

My experience is almost all bowl blanks are wet (green) to some extent and are sealed. Some are sealed only on the ends while others are fully sealed and you can not tell how wet the wood is. They are sold this way to reduce the risk of cracking.

I rarely buy bowl blanks any more. Most of my bowls are made from local woods so I just grab logs I find or look for trees that are being cut down. Free wood makes great bowls.

If you are looking for specific woods then my approach to getting bowl blanks may not work for you.

 

[eranox]

I have been looking to buy some bowl blanks to turn but just about all auctions say (Has been cut Green and sealed with wax) Correct me if I am wrong this is green meaning wet and it need to dry before it can be turned?

Almost all bowl blanks are sold green/wet. This is because it takes a long time for a solid bowl blank to dry completely. You can occasionally find kiln-dried bowl blanks which should be dry throughout. These can be turned to final shape and finished in one go.

For the green blanks, the method that has worked best for me is to turn the bowl to rough shape, leaving the walls and bottom extra thick. I then pack the rough-turned bowl in a paper grocery bag with the wet shavings that I just made. I label the bag with what's inside and the date that I packed it, and it goes on a shelf in the garage to dry. I live in Texas, and my garage gets quite warm, so even large/thick bowls are usually ready in 6 months if not less. Your drying time may be longer. It of course depends on how thick you left the walls on the roughout, and how wet the blank was to begin with.

Every week or so, I check the progress of all my rough-turned bowls. If they are developing cracks, I zap them with CA glue. Then I churn up the shavings, repack the bowl, and roll the bag back up. If the bowl has cracked with anything bigger than a hairline, I put the sealed bag inside a second grocery bag to slow drying a bit more.

Most straight-grained woods will shrink more on one axis than the other, and your bowl will become elliptical. This is why the walls are left extra thick. Once the bowl is dry, place it back on the chuck using the original tenon or socket. Using the tailstock if you can, turn it back to round, then turn and sand to final shape.

Bigger bowls obviously warp more than smaller bowls, so the walls need to be thicker to assure you have enough "meat" left so that you don't completely turn through a wall when you are turning to final shape. The formula I've been told is that the thickness of the roughed bowl's walls should be 10% of the bowl's diameter. In other words, a 10" wide bowl would have walls that are 1" thick. I don't really measure this, it's just a rough number that I shoot for. A little thicker never hurts, it just slows drying a bit, which may not be a bad thing.

 

[eranox]

I forgot to address the bit about turning wet blanks to final shape and finishing in one session. I have tried this, and have had terrible results. If the wood has any appreciable moisture content, it will warp badly at best, but usually will end up cracking and splitting to the point that it is ruined beyond repair.

In the few times that I have been partially successful with that method, the blank I was using was already nearly dry, and the blank was cut so that the heart of the log was not present or near the blank. Almost all cracks radiate from the heart of the wood outward, so if you get a blank from a very wide log that was cut near the outside, cracking will tend to be less likely. Also, it will warp a little less when drying.

 

[TellicoTurning]

Like Jim B, I rarely buy wood blanks, I get most of mine from friends and neighbors or from people at my craft shows that come by and offer... I always give a bowl back to whomever gives me a tree or logs....

Most of the time the wood is green/wet and I usually turn to finished size, and if it needs to be dried any, I'll microwave it a bit... sometimes I'll use the DNA bath, but mostly the microwave... if you walls are relatively thin, the bowl usually dries easily and with less warp or tendency to crack. Part of my wood stock is hackberry and the tree was standing dead when I got it, plus hackberry dries pretty quickly, so not a major problem for me.... also some species of woods are pretty stable and have less tendency to warp and crack...

If you are open to buying off the web, this is a good source... or appears to be... personally haven't bought anything from them, but would if I were in the market for a particular wood. Got Wood? LLC

 

[srs64]

wow thanks for all the info guys helps alot......
And this dale fellow......... I see him getting some of my wifes money soon!

 

[SDB777]

If you're wanting to turn bowls....why buy?
I'm betting you can find a county crew dropping trees on the right of way....like I do.
I'm betting if you approach them 'nicely', and tell them what you need, they will probably cut you some pieces to size(I would). Don't get a LOT of them, unless you can seal them yourself.

Exotic timbers are nice, but the bread-n-butter of bowl turning has to be local timber, and for the price of 'generally free', can't be beat.



Examples are always better then a bunch of words....

This came from a road side.


The other half of the same piece.




Scott (free is fun) B