Finishing wet wood

"Standard procedure" is anything but an occlusive coating in my house. Maple looks best without black mildew spots. You really want to get the moisture content down before anchorsealing or such, or woods with the sap up can grow some remarkably ugly things. Remember, the ride to the fiber saturation point is free of cracks or distortion. That's ~30%, with mildew and fungal growth stopping at ~20%, so plan accordingly.

What's going to happen with the shellac? Don't know. If you cut thin and spun hard, you took it off the lathe at about 30%. I'd get it out of the humidity, but not into the sun and hope for the best. Shellac will tolerate a certain amount of excess water, but it looks milky with the stuff trapped under.

Well, here's my experience. If you think of what prevents checking - since checks become splits - a moisture gradient which keeps the surface almost as wet (dry) as the interior, thin is great for all woods. Only ones I've had problems with, depending on the slope of the walls, have been woods with built-in cleavage plates - medullary rays - like oak and beech. Of fruit woods, I've only turned cherry and apple.

Two other good things about thin are the fact that you can throw almost all the unbound moisture by centrifugal force, and the wood has less substance to pull against and distort.

As to dry times, it depends on the relative humidity. Consider that a plank will lose or gain about one percent per week according to the FPL, and then remember that water migrates 10-15 times as fast from end grain as from the face, and you'd really have to have some strange circumstances to have a bowl which took more than two weeks to EMC at less than a half inch thick.

And then there is the LDD approach. 50/50 mixture of liquid dish detergent and water, soak the nearly finished bowl for 24 hours wipe most of the solution off, cover the bed of your lathe with plastic sheeting, chuck the piece up and finish it on out, I usually use shellac and wax for a finish. Depending on the type of wood, warping will be either non existant or give you a nice oval effect (oak is bad about going oval). However, I have had no problems with any of my pieces splitting.

Deb

*APPLAUSE, LOUD HUZZAHS, BELLS RINGING, CANNONS FIRING, 1812 OVERTURE CRESCENDOS*

Leif

How exactly is this supposed to work? Does the detergent lower the moisture content of the wood somehow? I'm not saying it doesn't work, of course, just wondering why it would. One of the other responses mentioned that the wood may appear milky under the finish without drying it, does the LDD method cause that to occur, or does the soaked wood behave in effectively the same manner as dried wood? I'll definately give it a try, as I've heard of this before. Thanks for filling in the details of the method.

To fill in a couple of details from my original post, the bowl in question is about 5" dia x 3" deep with a wall thickness of about

3/8", and slightly thicker (perhaps 1/2") on the bottom. I did the final cuts at a spindle speed of 1750 rpm, and sanded for a heck of a long time to clean up some tearout on the end grain, and got the piece fairly hot. Sanded though the grits to 400 (60, 100, 120, 220, 320, 400), and then burnished the piece with the shavings. No way of telling what the moisture content ended up being.

VERY low. You cut thin, spun well - bet you saw the water on the end grain - and then heated it by sanding.

NB on shaving burnishing. Don't do it if you are careless when cleaning your lathe. One or two maple curls can do some distressing things to an aspen bowl.

Its manner of action can be only speculated on. Some ascribe mystical, alchemical qualities to it, but a "vast consensus" of turners (errh, well, at least myself and two others!) seem to believe that the soap solution draws out water from the cell walls and replaces it with some substance in the soap. I have never had a finish appear milky from use of the soap solution. It makes the wood cut easier. And it takes any kind of finish with the wood still damp after final turning and sanding. Don't mention that I sent you the samizdat on The Soap Solution as you will receive the same scorn and loathing that I have had to suffer from the reactionary turners. You know the type: the boilers, the bakers, the microwavers, the soakers, the spin driers, the drycleaners, the air driers for ten years, etc. They will cause you to doubt the truth behind The Soap Solution, yea, verily, to cause it to appear un-Constitutional. Heed not the fearmongers! I am available for a limited time only free consultation by email. *G*

Leif

P.S. I have turned complete salad sets for my two nieces (18 Pieces in all) and not a one has warped or gone out of round. Maybe it is the type of oak that is referred to above, but in my experience, if you follow the directions you will not suffer from cracked, out-of-round turned items, chilblains, cracked hands, low libido, etc!*G*

Leif has said it all. But then why shouldn't he, he is the High Priest of LDD! :-)

Deb

I am just going to have to try the LDD method. One question though, when you take the bowl out of the solution, do you just drip dry it, or rinse it off, or what? robo hippy

Dr. Deb wrote:

in contrast to most other posters, here's my approach:

=====>A private email has been sent to you with a copy of The Soap Solution attached. Hopefully, this method will allow the counterrevolutionary turners to keep napping while they wait for their wood to dry.*G*

Leif

ROFL! So, if I use the method, do I get to learn the secret handshake? If you've actually got a blurb on it handy, you can email it to me at snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAMbloomer.net (remove the obvious NOSPAM, of course) I figure it's worth a try, at any rate.

So, have you only tried this with dishwashing detergent, or have you tried out simple glycerine as well? I haven't gone out and priced them, but I would suspect that glycerine flakes can be had in a reasonably large volume for far less than a commerical soap. That'd also narrow down the list of possible chemicals that are working in the wood to one.

I was wondering about that. There was a little water at first, but it dried up pretty quickly. And the bowl hasn't changed a fraction of an inch in the past two or three days, so I figure it's probably going to be okay.

I get the whole area with a shop vac (vacuum and then blow it off) between wood types, so it hasn't been a problem for me. Learned my lesson about aspen with a chessboard I made last fall- the dark squares are aromatic cedar, and the aspen turned a bit pink when I sanded the two together. Still looks nice, but that's the last time I mix aspen and anything else!

Hey Leif, Are counterrevolutionary turners the ones who turn with the wood spinning the other direction? Martin

Looks like it's too late to get the stuff cheap from a going-out-of-business sale.

good info... thanks, Marge! *g*

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

hmm... never worked with it, but it sounds like you really have to cover your aspen!

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Bill... is the bowl then "done", or do you bag/air dry/cast spells/ rack it?

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Sorry, Martin, they are more devious than that. By their words shalt thou know them! If you are suspicious of someone, send me a full transcript of their remarks and I will process it for give-away phrases and words and inform you of the findings. As a general rule of thumb, if they use the abbreviation of LDD followed by curse words and reflections on my ancestry you should be very suspicious. Either they know something that my mother never told me, or they are counterrevolutionary rats, . . .errrh, I mean woodturners. *G*

Leif