dish soap..

Works for what?

From the willow bowl update, a couple of glowing reviews here.

Of course there are people there who claim you can speed drying of wood by adding water, too. Seems odd, doesn't it? BTW, it isn't soap, it's detergent.

Wouldn't put much faith in it for anything but a sanding aid.

In the immortal words of the nearly sainted Algore, the debate is over!! The concensus is in!! LDD rocks!! 8^) *Ducking now to avoid the incoming rounds!*

Leif

>

Don't duck 'em, chuck 'em! (And post pix of how they turned out!)

Bill

It makes the sawdust taste funny.

I have experimented extensively with the LDD soaking (liquid dishwashing detergent, the hand kind, not dishwasher kind) and DNA soaking (denatured alcohol), and air drying. The style of bowls I do is turn green wood to final thickness (1/2 inch thick or less), then let it dry and warp, then sand and finish (about 10 days). There is no difference in drying time, or success rates in any of the methods, and I did a test where I used all 3 methods and weighed each bowl every day until they reached equilibrium. The only difference I noted was that the alcohol made the wood harder to sand, and the soap made the wood much easier to sand. The key to drying bowls is to remember that drying too fast and the wood cracks, and drying too slow and the wood molds. Your local weather humidity determines what works best for you. Very dry, and dry the wood inside one or more bags with or with out dry shavings in them. Humid, and you can air dry starting out on the floor, and raising to a wire rack in a week or so.

I haven't tried the soaking on thicker bowls where you leave them thick and dry to return later. I don't think it will make much if any difference, but as I said, I haven't tried it yet.

robo hippy

Makes sense. The lower boiling point of alcohol in the surface of the soaked pieces would evaporate more quickly, the equivalent of case-hardening by heat of sanding.

The higher boiling point of the glycerol designed to keep Madge's hands soft would do the opposite. No inconsistency.

Hotfoot.

It worked for me, but it's messy to clean up. Unwrapping a rough-turned bowl from newspaper is less annoying. I gave up on the detergent.

Max

=======> Gosh, fellows and girls! Buy you books and buy you books and all you do is eat the pictures -- sawdust, in this case. Nowhere in the World-famous Treatise on LDD does it suggest or recommend that you eat the sawdust that is produced while turning LDD impregnated items. However, since you mention it, I might add that to the next edition of TWTLDD. It would seem that a new benefit has appeared for this technique. Not only does it soften and clean your hands, and save your marriage/relationship, but ingesting it provides one with needed insoluble fiber and a concomitant cleansing of the bowels! Outstanding suggestion, Beeflow!

Leif

Well... I don't think there's a consensus on *anything* related to turning, and IMO, that's how it should be.

For my part, I have tried the LDD method, and it seemed to work ok, though I will admit that I did not follow the instructions to the letter, and used a different brand of detergent than was suggested. The downside of that was that the stuff I used had some blue dye that discolored the wood a bit, and wasn't that great to look at.

It did seem to reduce cracking, but I've more or less perfected my personal rough-to-finish technique in the meantime, and haven't given the LDD a second thought since. What I remember from my experiments was that it was awfully messy when I did it, and used a lot of sandpaper (and I go through enough of that as it is!)

You'll just have to give it a try, and see how it works out for you. Everyone does things a little differently, and it might be just the thing you need- never know until you try!

Allow me to clarify. Ingestion by Brief Inhalation(IBI). ...sort of like the way the odor of burning [insert favorite nasty combustible] makes one rub the tongue on the roof of the mouth.

Of course, a couple handfuls of shavings CAN provide a light snack while changing-out the chuck, especially if one is a beaver. I, however, am not a beaver, nor any other type of Canadian. I daresay a beaver might well be mistaken for Rabid Wildlife if the ingestion of sufficient LDD-imbued sawdust should cause his mouth to overflow with scrubbing bubbles.

And haven't you heard that many high-fiber bread products contain sawdust? I have heard this. I have not heard that the sawdust in commercially-sold bread contains LDD. Heaven forbid any woodturning sawdust should ever find its way into the food chain. Cleansing of the bowels, as mentioned above, should probably not be done with Joy.

Another chewer of cherry shavings out there? "Just a pinch between the cheek and gum" will give good satisfaction.

Well I persevered with it for a while, both on thin wall instant finish green wood and on the traditional 10% of diameter and leave it to dry a while method. I think it did help with cracking marginally but there is a huge downside. Different woods absorb the detergent at different rates and there is no way to determine how far the stuff has soaked in. After 2 years I still have bowls oozing LDD through oil and shellac finishes. I just can't be bothered to go through all that fuss to have a perfectly good bowl ooze gunk all over a nice antique table in a customers home. If I can't turn the green stuff immediately I toss it in the rain barrel until I can get to it. It's good for a couple of weeks and causes no finishing problems. Of course there is still the chance you might lose it through cracking as it dries but then you know for sure it's a gonna! And it ain't going to attack some old dear's table! I am now aware that there is no substitute for natural drying, either in a kiln or in a controlled open air environment. Like what's the big rush? So it takes a while to produce but that is all the more reason to charge a bit more and add to the story you tell the potential customer. Something like "it took 200 years for the tree to get to this size but it only takes a year for it to dry once I've worked my magic on it" Peter Visit my site at:

Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without

Peter! I am simply astounded by your report of your turned objects oozing LDD. I am no longer turning due to back problems, but in the time I used LDD I must have prepared at least a couple of hundred items of all types of wood in the form of large bowls, small salad bowls, platters and plates, pepper grinders, vases 12 inches deep, lidded boxes. I worked with spalted wood, green (just went out and chainsawed the branch or tree down), semi dried wood.

I never had any LDD oozing from any of the items and the bowls never exceeded 3/16ths inch out of round. Nor did they crack! I talk about adsorption in TWTLDD wherein I claim from my experience that the LDD is absorbed only a few cells deep which is turned or sanded away in the turning process.

I have had a number of reports from other turners who have tried the LDD process and "oozing through finishes" was never a reported problem. What stood out in almost all of the "failures" was that they failed to follow directions, either in the wrong dishsoap or in the recommended process of immersion, turning, sanding and finishing. Some of the pieces cracked or warped a bit, but from the description of "their" process, it was obvious they had not followed directions.

I have a number of old furniture pieces that my father made in the early

19teens on which some of my turned pieces reside and nary an ooze mark is present over a period of 10 to 15 years. I am SHOC KED, simply SHOCKED!! *G*

Leif

P.S. Are you in league with George?? LOL

If he were, he'd think that 3/16 out of round is unacceptable, not braggable. Even on a 1" thick piece of the more friendly woods like cherry, the difference in diameter across versus along grain seldom exceeds 3/8". That would be 3/16 "out of round" either side? Could get less by simply turning green wood thinner.

Soak times are so short, and with no agitation provided, penetration of this alcohol is not much behind that other fictional process. Expect very little on the outside of the bowl, where you've jammed the pores with centrifuged water, and little better inside, where the water's been replaced by air.

All of which begs the issue of dilute, unaugmented glycerin as a sanding aid rather than all the mess, foolishness and fiction attached to LDD. Standard humectant.

=====>The 3/16's was the largest out-of-round; the majority were in the range about 1/16 to 1/8. That was measuring the diameter at one point and then another diameter at a right angle to the first diameter.

===>Not sure what you are referring to here, George. Are you referring to alcohol soaking or LDD? If LDD, it doesn't meet with my experience using the "fictional" process. Jammed the pores with centrifugal water? That is quite a feat, I would think and cause cell collapse throughout the wall of the item.

=====>Perhaps you'll be able to purchase Glycerin through a chemical supply house at a cheaper bulk rate, but I note that Rockler has a 4 oz bottle for ca. $7.00; whereas, a half gallon of LDD runs about that same price. Insofar as the descriptive terms used, I can only relate to one: the mess. If not drained briefly and then any excess wiped off then you might get quite a rooster tail off the spinning piece, striping the back wall and one's self with LDD. One experience of this should insure that you'll follow directions more closely next time, or just damn the process and quit. I don't recall, George, but did you say you gave LDD a try? Leif

Yep, alcohol's alcohol whether it's got one or three hydroxyl groups. Mixing molecules in confined spaces goes slowly when there's nothing but Brownian movement.

The wonder of language is that different words mean different things. For instance a cell is closed, a pore is open. A vessel has a pore at each end. Unless it's the one you filled to overflowing by spinning the piece as you cut it. Surely you have noticed that the interior of a green bowl is much dryer than the out? Not unusual to have standing (or dripping) water on the end grain.

I like to eject as much as possible by using compressed air from inside. If it takes a couple days off the time it takes to pass through the mildew point, I count it as electricity well spent. Try it on white woods.