Bloodwood really dry?

[kirkfranks]

I had an interesting thing happen recently.

I was making some pen blanks a couple weeks ago from some bloodwood.
Now mind you I bought the bloodwood over a year ago. It sat inside the house for a couple weeks and then the balance of a full year in the garage. Since I bought it from from PSI/Woodturnings I would have Ass-U-Me-d it was dry to begin with and certainly by now. I had used a couple of the blanks from this package last year so the package was open and they always seemed dry on the outside.

Well I drilled the blanks for a cigar pen and another set for an Olympia pen about 2 weeks ago. I brought them in the house to glue them up but never got the glue done. So yesterday I finally have time to work on these again and when I looked the lower barel from the Olympia is the only one that the tube is loose. So now 3 out of 4 were so tight I had to knock them out with a punch and redrill the tubes
All of the tubes had been loose enough after drilling the first time that they could fall right through the holes. What a difference a little moisture makes.

Could explain why one of the previous pens from this wood split a month after it was made.

Perhaps I will start looking at moisture meters.

 

[jackrichington]

Hmmm..garages damper than houses...could that be your problem?? I bet it is..let your wood dry inside before you drill it and then turn it

 

[aurrida]

condition your wood in the same environment it will be used in. i think wood can hold around 12 percent moisture in a garage as apposed to around 7 percent in a centrally heated room. ideally your workshop would be kept around 7 percent humidity, good luck on that one. if you cant get your workshop around this figure bring the wood back inside overnight for example, dont leave it in the workshop.

it is generally advised to weigh wood every 2 or 3 days, when the weight stabilizes then they are ready to use. stack them so air can circulate around them to speed things up.

 

[n7blw]

Ambient moisture content around here in the Pacific NW runs about 12-14% year round in most woods. I check the m.c. with a meter when blanks arrive. If they're around 14%, I'm good to go. I received some Redwood burl blanks in November that looked wet - and were. They measured 27%, so I cross stacked them for three months. Now they measure 14% and are ready to be turned. The old wive's tales about wood needing to be 7-8% m.c. to be workable just doesn't cut it here.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Methinks you are overthinking this situation. Loose tube after glueing probably means your drill bit is either too big or is wobbly making an oversized hole. Moisture making such a dramatic change seems unlikely to me, especially with a wood as dense and oily as Bloodwood. You need to review your entire drilling/glueing technique. What glue are you using?

 

[kirkfranks]

Frank,
I use epoxy glue.
These were not glued. I could tell because the epoxy always leaves a mess on the ends that needs cleanup. The tubes were just as tight as if I had glued them in though.
The moisture making such a dramatic change seemed unlikely to me too (until it happened), thats why I thought it was interesting enough to pass on.

 

[Jarheaded]

Isn't there something about things expanding and contracting with temperature? I seem to remember something about this from science class.

 

[Rifleman1776]

Originally posted by kirkfranks

Frank,
I use epoxy glue.
These were not glued. I could tell because the epoxy always leaves a mess on the ends that needs cleanup. The tubes were just as tight as if I had glued them in though.
The moisture making such a dramatic change seemed unlikely to me too (until it happened), thats why I thought it was interesting enough to pass on.

Epoxy is what I use, partially because it is a gap filling glue. Your statement: "These were not glued. I could tell......", is very confusing. I would think you would know if you had done something. Also confusing, if not glued why/how did the tubes get into the blanks? There are more questions here than just the effect of moisture.

 

[kirkfranks]

Originally posted by kirkfranks

I brought them in the house to glue them up but never got the glue done.

 

[Ron in Drums PA]

Let me see if I understand this right. You drill them in your garage, the same place where the wood sat for a year. Then took the wood indoors and two week later the tubes will not fit into the holes?

Do I have this right?

If so the wood lost some moisture and shrank. You are right, that is why the wood split from the previous pens.

Tough lesson to learn. Wood will always look for equilibrium with its environment, no matter how old the wood is.

Chair makers of the past would use this effect to keep the rungs tight in the legs. (Legs would have more moisture then the rungs)