Wood is turned green?

They dry slowly. Many turners do turn green, however I prefer to turn dry.

Neal, My tree trimmer has a small chainsaw based portable sawmill and he cuts bowl blanks for me from my trees and trees he drops for other clients. Anchorsealed, they continue to dry slowly as moisture migrates to the sides. The rule of thumb is one year per one inch of thickness. I find wood dries a little faster than that here in the midwest with the wood in my garage or shed. I am about to build a small solar dryer to speed things up a bit. Dan

Neal... most of the blanks that you buy on Ebay and related sites are green and sealed...

That gives the turner a choice of drying them or turning green and the seller doesn't have to wait for a year or so before selling them.. Mac

Hi Neal

Yes Neal you're right, the wood keeps on drying slowly under the wax emulsion seal, it slows down the drying and it delays and lessens the splitting, not prevent it.

If trees grew with only heartwood or sapwood and nice evenly annular growth, then you might be able to air dry those sealed slabs of wood with very little degrade, luckily we do get all kinds of grain and beautiful contrasting sap/heartwood, and all of the challenges that go with it.

So cut and seal the wood quickly and then sell fast is the easiest way of moving your blanks.

However there is an other more labor and cost intensive way of treating your wood, and for this I will give you a link to a website you can peruse at your leisure. (and eat your hearth out for the wood they have and sell) :-))

The boiling and air drying and then sometimes kiln drying to shorten the drying time and lessen the amount of degrade has been around for a while, however most of us rather turn a green piece of wood enjoy the ease of turning it then either let it warp or let it dry and return it in a few months/years.

here's the l> I do not turn bowls (yet) but I recently got a hobby sawmill. Some log

Well you'll find a lot of good poop at

about sawmilling and drying. Here, you've got good advice, some less so. Slab out a few years worth of growth either side of the heart to remove difficult grain and checks that may originate there. Leave the bark on the rest of the blank so the sapwood doesn't shrink and check so easily. Wax or timber sealer will slow the loss through endgrain, which is, as you know over ten times as rapid at losing water as the face, minimizing end checks. Sell the timber green, because the turners know that turning green is easier on the elbow, and greatly improves their chances of avoiding catastrophic drying defects. Also, since the end grain dries so rapidly, and a roughed bowl seldom has any place farther than an inch away from open end, a rough will dry in a couple/three months rather than years. Wise turners will regard even a "dry" thick piece as wet, because there'll be a difference between surface and interior caused by lag in equalization with the atmosphere. They should turn, dry, turn anyway, if they're looking for circularity.

Neal, Click on this pictorial to saw it up into turning blocks.

cad

neal k> I do not turn bowls (yet) but I recently got a hobby sawmill. Some log

Some wood has a lot of variation between sapwood and heart wood, but with some species it's virtually indistinguishable. *IF* you only want heartwood due to the contrast it may make sense to trim that much sapwood off, but I'd suggest leaving it and letting the turner decide...

...Kevin