Wood question

The wood which I know as granadillo is hard, heavy, brittle and turns lousy. All exotics are difficult or impossible to kiln dry and the problem compounds with the thickness. I've used 1.25 x 1.25 blanks for tool handles but wouldn't to anything else with it.

I'd crack it up to experience. People in stores are there to sell you stuff. Most don't turn. Few turners buy kiln dried stock. We've learned to rough turn, dry the wood and then re-turn.

Bill

Bob Beckwith wrote:

Where it came from and where it is differed too much in humidity. You may also have helped it by opening up new end grain to promote checking. Get a bit of why under your belt at:

, where chapters two and three will certainly give you insight into the problem. Some woods come from such bad neighborhoods that they never amount to much.

I'd add, to what the others have said, that if you're going to cut to length, you'd better invest in some end sealer, anchorseal is a common brand. In Fact, you need to have a gallon of it anyway. You are going to want to collect green wood and you'll need to seal it on the ends to keep it from cracking. The alternative is LDD. Let the games begin.

Dave in Fairfax

I haven't found Granadilo to check any more or less than other exotics that have been kiln dried. I turn a lot of granadilo and find it nice to turn. Much of the kiln dried exotic woods will get hair line checks in a dry climate, like a heated shop. If the checks are fine just fill them with super glue befor turning. Chances are that the glue won't even be noticable in the finished product.

Bob,

Your first mistake was cutting it up before you were ready to turn it. Second was putting it up on a shelf (HOT!). Third, don't expect wood to behave any certain way. Being a natural material, wood does what wood wants to do, sometimes __regardless__ of what we mere mortals may do to coax it to do otherwise. "Kiln dried" doesn't mean diddly anyhow. A wood might be dried to 12% moisture level in Guatemala, then sit in a wood yard somewhere until it is figuratively soggy as a wet sponge. When it got to your dealer it might have had twice the moisture it did when it left the kiln, and if your dealer had it in a relatively cool place it likely didn't dry out much until you stuck it up on that shelf.

Your retailer likely won't refund your money or replace your wood for all of those reasons. Hang onto it and use it for smaller projects, inlay pieces, knobs, finials...don't scrap it, just learn from it.

-- Chuck *#:^) chaz3913(AT)yahoo(DOT)com Anti-spam sig: please remove "NO SPAM" from e-mail address to reply. <

September 11, 2001 - Never Forget

Liquid Dishwashing (hand not machine) Detergent. Preferably Costco's Kirkland brand clear to amber, but other types have been used, coloring may transfer to the wood. It is mixed, in a large, bucket, 1:1 ratio, with water, and the freshly cut piece of wood is kept immersed until turning. You wipe off the wood, DON"T try to dry it, and turn it to completion then finish it immediately. If you have to stop before the turning is done, you re-immerse it until you are ready to continue turning. Since you will be turning a recently soaking-wet, chuck of wood, you may want to stand to one side when firing up your lathe. The line of liquid that appears on the wall will clean up easily, it's mainly soap, after all. The idea is that since the wood doesn't dry out, it doesn't crack. The alternatives are boiing for long periods or nuking and weighing repeatedly to dry and de-stress the wood. OR turning to rough shape, bagging and waiting 1/2 a year to see if it cracked before you can turn it the rest of the way. I prefer to turn it all the way at once and finish it then and there. Deferred pleasure isn't high on my list. You can store the wood in the mix for a long time. I've got some that came down in Isabel that I'll get around to at some point. If you want the official documentation and blesssing, Leif will be along shortly. %-)

Dave in Fairfax

How about using the known properties of the wood to your advantage?

For example, discard the 10% "rule" for turning, and the 1" per year "rule" for drying. Turn to worst case plus - for instance, if you have a 10" bowl cut tangentially out of fairly normal soft maple, take the 9% average tangential shrinkage and your desired wall thickness of 1/4" and turn it to leave a _total_ of 1 1/2 inches of wood between the two sides (3/4" each). This will greatly diminish both your drying time and your checking problems with a modicum of care.

As you have seen on your woodpile, and may confirm through empirical information obtained from FPL, end grain loses water 10-15 times as rapidly as face grain. There being no point on your bowl more than 1" from open air along the endgrain, you can examine the average time to EMC from the same data source - 3-5 months in the plank - and divide by ten. If two weeks isn't short enough - try whatever else you think works.

You've already noticed that turning to 3/8 or less wall thickness will provide moisture from the interior rapidly enough to keep surface checks from forming during drying of bowl-shaped objects in almost all domestics.

With the really squirrelly stuff, you might want to have more patience and thickness if you want circular. Odd grain angles make for strange warps.

more snippage

I was responding to the OPs' question of "What's LDD"? Which I'd recommended due to his problems having cut some wood to turning blank size and then let it sit, wherein it cracked. Had he cut it fresh and then had a choice of ways to deal with it, the conversation might have gone elsewhere. Anchorseal was recommended, most anything but leaving it to crack as it dried. I make my blanks from a variety of different angles and agree with your feelings about odd angles and strange warps, between that and natural edges a lot of fun can be had, but that doesn't really apply to his question.

Dave in Fairfax

Uh, it was meant to answer the impatience you indicated with wood in your post. Which is why I quoted it, not the original.

Wood is "fresh" as long as it is above the EMC. It is "green" above the FSP. Through it all, it is wood, and responds to proper care predictably.

My recommendation is knowledge, which is much more likely to produce consistent success than chickens, dishwater or Stolichnaya....