Living in the rural midwest I have many oppotunities to collect newly fallen timber. My question is given this selection of timber what's my best selection and what should I just stay away from. BTW, I'm very new to turning!
-Terry
Elm Oak Sugar Maple Silver Maple CottonWood Osage Orange Locus Hackberry Mulberry
As a new turner I would avoid the oak, difficult to turn and not many turners like it, and the cottonwood, it is very soft. The others are all nice to turn. If you get any silver maple put it in a plastic bag for 30 to
I have turned about 20 bowls out of all different types of wood. My wife's favorate is my only oak piece. Okay, it is heavily curled, but still...
Hi Terry
Nothing wrong with any of those woods really, I have turned all of those successfully, and then some, all have their own special things, I think by turning all the different woods you get a better overall turning skill, as they give you different challenges.
Also keep in mind as we talk about these woods that each and every log is different, also saying Elm, or Oak, and we are talking about 60 or so Oak species in N.A. and half a dozen Elm species, and there can be big differences in those woods.
The Maples turn all fairly well, some are softer like Manitoba Maple and Silver Maple that will give you tear-out with bad tool technic, also the drying of the turnings fairly easy.
Elms turn OK, the cambium layer is stringy, the wood, except for the Rock Elm, is not hard and drying is no challenge.
Hackberry is a lot like Elm
Osage turns good when green, gets harder to turn when old and dry, beautiful wood when finished, dry slowly and you're fine.
Locust, Black Locust is a lot like Osage, in all ways, Honey locust is more like Oak open grain and can be splintery when dry, nice turning wood.
Mulberry turns like a dream, and looks great new and later with darkened color, but a real challenge to dry it without splitting, total seal and paper bag, does give me the best results, though still unpredictable.
Oaks, I have turned both white and red, never had a problem with it, I know a lot of turners say they have problems, but I finish turned green Red and White Oak, and rough turned, dry and return Red and White without problems.
One important thing with all this wood, start with wood that has no splits, start and complete the turning without having it sit for hours or days while only partially turned, wrap a plastic bag around the wood while taking a break or at mealtime, and don't try to hurry the drying, give it time while you rough turn and practice--practice-- practice, and by then you'll be better able to finish turn your earlier work.
You got to learn to walk before you can learn to run !!!!!!!
Also come back to the forum, and ask questions, just remember the only dumb question is the question you don't ask !!
Here are a few turning related photo-albums, if you are interested.
Hello,
As a professional woodturner, I have turned thousands and thousands of bowls platters and hollow forms over the last 12 years from all of the mentioned species and can offer these observations:
Note: Here is a link to an article I wrote on oil finishes that shows some of these timbers finished, to give you an idea of what they look like when completed:
Oak: My least favourite of those mentioned, but if quartersawn to show the rays, or if the piece has lots of curl (fiddleback), it can be rewarding. Oak has really large pores, so if you're going to be turning bowls, you may want to seal the interior surfaces to make cleaning easier. I usually use Shellac for this, but other products will also work. BTW, Water Oak makes really nice hollow forms when spalted...
Sugar Maple: Nice Maple to work. It can be a tad bland at times, but it offers a nice background for colouring and burning and it easy to work.
Silver Maple: Oh how sweet it is... :-) I love Silver Maple!!! Did I mention that I love Silver Maple??? :-) It is a magnificent timber to work and can produce some ultra high figured blanks with exceptional colouring. I can't say enough good things about Silver Maple!
Cottonwood: Only nice if you can get some really coloured logs with lots of fiddleback. It can smell like an outhouse, so it has to be exceptional or I pass on this one.
Osage Orange: We call this Bodark in Texas. Nice timber to work, easy to turn and finish. It takes a really high polish and can make some nice pieces. The yellow colour darkens over time, unless you apply preventative measures to forestall this degradation.
Locus: Nice timber, interesting grain patterns on some examples. Worth your time if you can get some.
Hackberry: Grows like a weed around here... Pretty bland unless you spalt it, which is easy to do. Otherwise, it's rather boring and bland.
Mulberry: Really nice timber to work and grows like a wee here as well. Nice yellow colour that mellows like Osage unless preventative measures are taken when finishing. Mulberry can easily ripple between the early wood and the late wood rings unless properly sanded. However, if heavily over sanded on purpose, it makes a very interesting textured piece. Sort of like a blasted poor man's Cedar of Lebanon.
Good luck to you and best wishes in all of your woodturning endeavours!
In a word, just grab it all and see what you like.
I haven't turned all the stuff on this list, but I can tell you about a few of them.
Oak is hard, and cracks like crazy. I don't turn it, and use it in the firepit instead- YMMV.
Both are very rewarding, offering nice figure and they can be highly polished- looking almost like glass even before a finish touches them. They spalt well also, and that's a great look (like black ink lines wound into the grain.) It's sometimes more challenging, but I often nab maple logs that have fungi growing on them, as the wood tends to be wild inside. The more it has decayed, the harder it is to keep together, but it displays a lot more color and character.
It's easy to turn wet, but hard as a stone when dry. So hard, I usually wear gloves when roughing a dried blank to prevent the little slivers from tearing up my hands.
Never turned these ones, but you forgot a few. I'm also in the rural Midwest (Wisconsin), and one of my favorite things to turn is Birch. You have to get it quickly after it has been cut, because it rots away in no time at all, but in my opinion, it's a seriously nice looking and under-rated wood, especially if you can get a crotch piece or one with a couple of knots in it. Doesn't split easily, either.
Aromatic Cedar is around, but usually in someone's yard as an ornimental tree. It looks great, you just need to wear a dust mask if you normally don't.
Apple trees have some great looking wood as well- I've heard it's tough to keep from cracking, but I've had good luck with the piece a guy at work gave me. Definately wouldn't turn any away.
While I've never turned it, I've seen a lot of really nice pieces turned from Box Elder (or Manitoba Maple, if you prefer) Sometimes it's got some dramatic red streaks in it that look great.
Willow is okay, but smells bad and isn't quite as nice looking as some others. I have a ton of it, but I don't think I'll use it all.
Black walnut, is of course, walnut- and beyond reproach in almost any form of woodworking.
And lowly Basswood is great for practice or if you feel like doing some painting. It doesn't look like much, but it's easy to turn, and the trees tend to be huge.
I avoid pine at all costs, no matter what I'm doing, but your tastes may vary.
I really enjoyed turning some white oak a friend brought me from Oregon.
Hello,
I'm no big fan of Oak, but on occasion you can run across a nice blank... This is a link to a Spalted Water Oak piece I did a few years ago that turned out rather nice. Sometimes, new turners opt for Oak because its so plentiful in most parts of the country and it's so easy to get green. When they turn it, they find out that it can be a very bad boy and usually migrate to other easier and more highly figured timbers.
http://www.woodturn> Figure not included. :-) In our club we have one turner who likes oak, none
Oak, and there are a _lot_ of different oaks, is a sure seller where I come from. Unfortunately, it's not common. Got a few useable pieces delivered with my firewood a few years back, and turned up a bunch of it. Northern red and regular old white are all I've turned, and it's not particularly difficult, as long as you realize that it rusts your tools and lathe when it's green.
Amen to that. I had a goodly supply of white oak, some of it turned when wet and the rest dried before turning. And I can say with complete candor that I've never been as frustrated with any other wood. Tearouts and catches are common, and the end products are really quite indistinguished unless the grain is irregular. Simply not worth the effort and frustration. Recently a neighbor cut down a black oak and was surprised when I turned down his offer to take what I wanted.
Max
Interesting that everyone hates it. I have only done three pieces of oak (one red and two white), but they cut easily with no tear out at all. Maybe I should quit while I am ahead.
That's been my experience. I haven't done much in oak. I'm pretty new to this and most of my actual attempts at making something has been redbud simply because I had to cut one down so I had a free supply. But I have had some scraps of oak around from some other projects and it seemed to work quite nicely although I haven't done anything much. Just stuff like hair sticks and the like. I haven't messed with end grain on any of those attempts that I recall since my scraps aren't that big. I do a lot of scroll saw work so a 3"x3" piece of wood is NOT scrap.
I've done three oak pieces as well. One was fine, but it was just a simple replacement chair leg turned from a dry piece of timber, but the other two were a waste of my time.
*Cutting* the oak was no problem in the two bad cases- in the first attempt, a turned a bowl from a burl cap that looked simply wonderful... for about two weeks. After that, it slowly warped into a wooden analog of the elephant man.The second was from a peice of green oak that I began to turn a hollow form from. Not only was it miserably boring to look at, grain-wise, but it developed a huge crack about halfway through the hollowing process.
Could be a personal failing on my part, but I just don't consider the stuff worth turning. Come to think of it, I'm not a huge fan of using it for flatwork either- unless I'm using quartersawn white oak with nice ray flecks, and I can rarely afford that stuff!
The thing this thread points out is that some people are totally successful with woods that others consider useless and unworkable. Don't let anyone tell you to only use such and such wood OR finish OR lathe OR tool OR drying protocol OR sales method,etc.
Experiment and you may find yourself doing the impossible!
"TonyM" wrote in news:JYOdneeoDo1hLR7bnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
Tony, I've turned quite a bit of white oak; mostly mallets, tool handles, reproduction spindles etc. I never really thought about turning a bowl of oak. All of the oak I've turned was well dried. It wasn't the easiest wood to turn, but I didn't find it that troublesome. It liked sharp tools and a patient touch.
Hank
Actually I've had pretty good luck with cottonwood. It is soft, but makes very nice boxes and bowls. A sample is attached.
A lot of my problems with oak undoubtedly deal with my relative inexperience. I've been turing about two years and have a lot to learn about the process. I keep my tools sharp in the extreme, so it must be my technique. I've no delusions about that. And since the original poster mentioned that he, too, is a neophyte, I thought my experiences might be more appropriate to his situation than that of some of the more experienced turners herein. I'm sure many contributors to this NG can turn oak with nary a problem. However at this stage of my experience, I've pledged to keep frustration at a minimum--life seems more pleasant that way. :-)
Max
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