Spent 3 hours turning a bowl using my knuckle crunching chinese 4 jaw non centering basic chuck. Success not bad for a first attempt at a large item 8 inches accross. Wood was a 10 inch diam x 3 inch thickness piece of sycamore from a woodyard who mainly supply firewood for stoves etc.The guy said it had been cut last year so I thought it would be ok. As i sit here now I can see multi splits appearing radial fashion...and it will end up as firewood.
Ok so what am I doing wrong... Should I be using only wood gathered and stored under cover for a year or more?? Will all wood split like this..are some worse than others?? Whast sources can any one suggest?
"Capt T" wrote: (clip)Any input gratefully received... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I'll leave it for others to discuss wood splitting. My advice is: get rid of that $20 chuck. It will drive you nuts. Learn from my experience. If you are not ready to invest in a good chuck, use a faceplate with a glue block.
If you are a marine Capt. those independent 4 jaw chucks make fairly decent smal boat anchors and can serve as decorative door stops. I'm not being a smart alec here, just trying to emphasize Leo's important advice. That chuck won't be your first mistake, but it could be your last. Splitting wood is a lesser problem; that chuck can split your head. Once I tried to use a similar chuck and look what kind of sloppy turner I turned ou to be! Welcome and all good luck with your woodturning endeavors.
A lot depends on how the wood was cut and stored before you got it. If it were simply bucked into stovewood lengths and left on the heap, it probably gained quite a few cracks en route. If the weather get wet, as, I believe it does over ther come winter, they might have closed on you, only to open after you brought it into a habitable building.
First, inspect your wood for hidden checks very carefully. Lots of times firewood hides disaster from you until it begins to dry again. Maple - assume you mean Acer pseudoplatanus as "Sycamore" - isn't the worst, nor is it the best ease of drying. Thinner you turn at the outset the better chance of survival, but you still don't want to push you luck. Smart money keeps the piece at a 65-75% relative humidity for a day or two for evaluation, then back to the house, where things are probably a lot dryer. Mine's at 40%, but it's pretty cold outdoors. Don't rush it.
Good reading on drying and tables on the correlation of wood moisture content with RH at
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Chapter three is where the good stuff on drying resides.
Fine advice from all, but they were probably to shy to suggest you take the LDD plunge and , other than the advice on that four-jawed finger eater, you won't have to worry greatly about splits and warps. "The World-famous Treatise on Liquid Dishwashing Detergent" follows by separate mail.
AAAHHHHHH!!!!!! I guess not.If you imagine a tree trunk cut down laid on its side and then a slice taken from it accross the trunk that was my starting point.So as I look in the bowl I can see the concentric rings of the tree..so not accross the grain.. At least I can work out how old the bowl is :-)
Thanks Gerald obvious to most people but now I know.
One thing to bear in mind - how long the wood was cut doesn't always have any relationship to how dry the wood is. If it has been stored outside, the moisture content will almost certainly still be quite high (especially in the UK at this time of year!).
Second point - wood usually cracks when it is dried too quickly. At the first sign of cracking, move your work of art to somewhere cooler and more humid and dry it slowly. This isn't always guaranteed to work but improves the odds in your favour.
Another way of reducing cracking is to turn your piece of work thinner. If you get it thin enough, you reduce the possible moisture gradient across the wood and allow it to move instead of cracking.
Bowls are usually turned side grain rather than end grain but that doesn't mean you can't do either as long as you're careful with the drying process. Either way, when turning a bowl from wet wood, normal practice is to rough turn (to a thickness of around 10% of the diameter) and leave until dry before finish turning.
As for chucks, in the long run you'll find a self centering chuck worth the expense. You may be able to pick up one at a reasonable price on ebay.
Final suggestion - if you haven't already, join the local woodturning club and the AWGB. Their website is at
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and if you don't know where the nearest club is, the website has a list.
If you don't mind, would you please send me "The World-famous Treatise on Liquid Dishwashing Detergent"? I'm at the stage of trying to decide on a lathe, and trying to learn all I can. Any help would be appreciated.
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