Apricot Wood

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W.Y.

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BC, Canada
A friend in town asked if I wanted to cut an old apricot stump down for him in exchange for the firewood. It was green wood full of sap yet but hollow and decayed in the center. It is such pretty wood so I sorted out these few pieces that I thought might have possibilities as turning wood.

ApricotTrunk.jpg


Then I started dissecting it with the chain saw working around the hollow center and came up with eight pieces of beautifully colored solid pieces about 16" long each.
Will anchorseal both ends today and store them between stickers in the garage until they are dry enough to make all kinds of turnings.

Apricotsalvagedfromhollowtrunk.jpg
 
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Apricot is a wonderful wood to turn, very unique colors. It is also very difficult to dry without twisting and splitting. I would cut the blanks over-sized and coat the ends up about 1 inch with Anchor seal and let them AIR DRY!! If you hurry the process, expect to loose 50 to 75% of them

DavidA
 
Pioneerpens said:
very nice, should make some super pens!
Click to expand...

None of it will be for pens . Every body and his uncle and aunt and sister and grandmother in my part of the world are making pens because they think that is all a lathe is for or else they have not advanced any farther than pens with their turning abilities so it is hard to get a decent profit after buying the hardware kits with so many discounting pen sales. .
It is even hard to get enough $ $ for pen blanks on the buy / sell boards from nice wood like that anymore to warrant cutting them to that size. .

That wood should be dry and ready to turn in about a year and I will be able to make a few choices of the other thousands of different fast selling items that can be turned on a wood lathe. I will be making lamps , boxes, potpoorri bowls, T lights , candle sticks , bottle stoppers , ring holders , small bowls and a whole host of other things. I might even re-saw some of it to make some cool looking segmented vessels. :wink:
 
As David said, I would also cover a great deal of the wood with anchor seal, or whatever you coat with, and probably be longer than a year before you can turn it. The wood is pretty as heck, but it is difficult to keep from twisting and splitting. Almost total coverage is needed to reduce the chance of this happeneing, I also agree that it would be a shame to use this for blanks only. Thanks, cause YOU can make some real nice things from this.

NIce find
Jerry
 
DavidA said:
Apricot is a wonderful wood to turn, very unique colors. It is also very difficult to dry without twisting and splitting. I would cut the blanks over-sized and coat the ends up about 1 inch with Anchor seal and let them AIR DRY!! If you hurry the process, expect to loose 50 to 75% of them

DavidA
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree David.
Any of the fruit bearing orchard woods can be a challenge but after many years of using different kinds of them I am having a lot better sucess rate.

I just got a bunch of orchard cherry wood cut and sealed and put away about ten days ago . I don't think I posted that on this site because at that time this site would not remember my log on info but now it does. .
I am also doing a almost day to day comparison and experiment on my own site with both a boiled and a DNA treated bowl from it. I have a lot of experience with DNA for having green wood ready for final bowl turning with a couple weeks but none with boiling so I was asked to do the comparison for some where DNA is not available to them.
 
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