Green wood question?

[booney0717]

NOt sure if this the right place to post this question or not, so forgive me if i'm posting in the wrong catigory. Anyhow I just got my hands on a pretty nice chunk of green wood. I think its osage orange. I cut it down to 8 blanks waxed it and but it on the shelf. How long should i let it dry before i turn it. Up until now i've just purchased my blanks ready to go and this green wood thing is new to me.
Thanks.
Kevin

 

[commercialbuilder]

You need to weigh each blank and write it down then every week weigh them again and keep doing so until they quit loseing weight and stabelize. If you want them quicker clean off the wax and put them in DNA for a week and they will be ready to use 2-3 days after taking them out but you must get rid of the wax. The DNA replaces the water in the wood and then it dries out quickly after removing from the DNA.

 

[booney0717]

Never heard of the dna trick. With the wood dring out that quickly does it split?

 

[booney0717]

Also will the dna bleach out the wood any?

 

[mdburn_em]

You can let it dry naturally and wait.

There are ways to speed up the process if you want

You can microwave it and "boil" the moisture out. You should be able to search and find threads that deal with that process

If I don't want to make a pen immediately (in the next 4 hours) but soon, I cut and drill the blank.

I'll let it sit for a couple days to a week like that. The wood will move but you are allowing the wood to dry from the outside AND from the inside.

I redrill it/ream it and glue it.

Once the glue is dry, I'll turn it down close to finished size but not right down to the bushings.

Again, I'll let it sit a day or 2

Then I finish it.

 

[TellicoTurning]

If it is in fact Osage Orange, it will be pretty stable even green... it won't move much.

when it does get dry, the wood will be about two stages above stone for hardness... when I was a kid, remember that my dad like to use osage orange (we called it bodark) for fence posts... they didn't rot and were hard so the wire didn't sag too much either.