turnings #11: first hollow-form failure update - major checking!

You could always use it for firewood. Amazing what wood can do sometimes. I had a piece of green ash literally explode off the lathe last week – didn’t appear to have any checks or cracks in the piece! If I leave a green piece on the lathe I mist it with water and cover it tightly with plastic wrap. That does not always work either.

-- Those that say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

That stinks after you did most of the work.

That’s the piths…........................LOL Jeff is right….......leave a piece of green wood on the lathe you must wet it down and wrap in plastic and tie it tightly. If you don’t….well you saw what happened.

-- Jerry--A man can never have enough tools or clamps

To bad Gary

-- Jim from Heirloom Woodshop Southern Oregon, custom furniture,woodworking school,heirloomwoodshop.com

Yeah, it’s crazy stuff. Lou – I’d already given up on this piece. It’s halfway between both of my hollowing tool sizes, and just too hard to work for me – a novice – to be any fun. Also, I’d already cracked the rim all over just trying to widen it up to make it an easier project. It was already scrap, but it was still a little sad to see it crack so badly.

I cut some rounds off of a piece of European olive – the check’n’est wood I’ve ever experienced, and one of the larger pieces – only about 5” diameter or so – I actually wrapped a band clamp around and tightened as hard as I could with a large allen wrench. It STILL checked and opened up like a Pac Man with about a 3/4” mouth. It’s solution to get around band clamp was to dome outward on one side. It became a kind of flat, rounded cone.

I think I’m should keep some olive logs around in a humid environment, in case I ever need to forcibly tear anything, like a car, or foundation apart. I can just cut some short pieces and wedge them in a crack, and then put up a warning sign and leave :)

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

Ahhh…the joys of turning….I get that sometimes…it seems for a while I’m on a roll and the stuff rolls of the lathe just the way I envision….then there are the times that everything seems to go bad….checks, cracks, grain tear, knots that come apart..voids..the grain inside the piece is colorless….or my stain/finish goes south.

Sometimes I wish I had taken up golf….at least I know for sure I stink at that….....BUT…when you get that really nice burl or blank…and you turn that great one in a million goblet, hollow or segmented….it makes up for all those previous stinkers….Just always remember….there is another beautiful work…just waiting for you to discover and you will. By the way…you are making great progress…..I tend to think a person can’t be trying hard enough if they don’t get some stinkers….

I’ve been turning for a looong time and I still blow it now and then….I always have to remember that wood is organic….we do not control it…and we have to to learn to work with it the way it wants us too….and sometimes it iust isn’t happening….so the best advice I’ve ever gotten was to take the good with the bad….you can learn alot from both (the best leasons come from the failures – they tend to teach me more patience and a lot about humility…LOL). Anyway….you are lucky I don’t post my failures…...luckily wood burns fast…...sheesh..

-- Woodworking.....My small slice of heaven!

reggie – you should come hang out and cheer me up. You’d have lots to do. I mess up very often :)

Thanks for the encouragement!

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

Haveing your same problems Gary. Still only have one good success from my eucalyptus. Just took a piece out of the frige and tried to turn it today. Still checked and cracked all over.

Reggie, Thanks for the encouragement. I have had some great turnings from bought wood (seasoned) and some pallet stuff, but all old wood. Nothing green want to cooperate with me.

Will keep pluggin along and hope you do too Gary. Allways love to keep up with your posts.

-- Scrap Wood's the best...the projects are smaller, and so is the mess!

I always say….
if you don’t make a mistake, you werent working.

It’s all part of the game. I can’t wait until i start to turn. Never did that yet

-- Woodshop supplies at bulk discounts. www.getneds.com

Now you have the opportunity to practice filling cracks. Mix up some epoxy and give it a try!

-- ---call me Mark

Well, I give you an A+ for sharing your experience with us. It takes more initiative to show a “Boo-Boo” and tell about it, than it does a project well done.

I appreciate your blog, as it’s a true learning experience. Thanks!

BTW: Have you seen the possom since he slept in your shavings bag? That was just too incredibly adorable!

-- "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Hi queep the wood if possible in a plastic bag,here in lima is very humid so very seldom the woods crack unless sun hit them see my pict(lat ones) Im turning pith and all very little movement on them

-- peruturner,lima peru

Well Gary, I too think you need to invest in some plastic bags. You could also try packing in your new green closed form with the shavings you are creating from the same piece in the plastic bag. That way you don’t have to wet it, although that is a good idea too. An endgrain turning needs to have even walls and bottom before it can take the drying out. Most (actually all) of my closed turnings have the pith in the bottom. I find that it is a good idea to use super glue on the pith from the outside as soon or sooner than you can get at it to reinforce it a bit. I hope you won’t think I’m boasting when I tell you that I have never lost a green piece, and I have turned quite a few over the years. I hope this is ENcouraging and not DIScouraging to you. Looking forward to your next blog describing a turning triumph. Have fun in the meanwhile!

-- Mike, American in Norway

Gorilla glue

-- Router è ancora il mio nome.

That is something I forgot to mention about keeping the humidity high until the piece has suficient area to allow for the natural dehydration rate to balance with the “breathing” rate of the wood. The bark and fibre of the outer rings are made to keep the hydration inside the tree (near the live pith) while it is alive – the cuts used to remove a branch or fell the tree allow an area for the hydration to escape. When those layers are removed the rate at which the hydration migrates into the local atmostphere is controled by the humidity around it. If the air is dryer…then that rate is accelerated…accelerate this too much and you have the fibres separating (cracking) because the water dehydrates faster then the ability of interal air to stabilize the pressure. In order to retard this acceleration, you need to make sure the humidity is more balanced….Needless to say, Jeff, Peru and Stefang have excellent suggestions on how to normalize this process.

I guess I forget this problem since I always keep my green turnings in a cool area with a pan of water nearby….while they cure. The humidity here is usually pretty stabile….(and it seems to be that I usually turn green stuff in the colder wetter months) so I haven’t needed to use plastic bags and or a sprayer….but those are great ideas to remember.

Once again LJ’s come up with excellent suggestions…

-- Woodworking.....My small slice of heaven!

reggie – I’ve tried some of the things. I have stored some pieces in plastic bags full of their own chips. I’ve painted some over with BLO immediately after turning. I’ve also painted some up with Anchorseal, similar to what turning blank producers do with bowl and other blanks. With ficus – the wood above – it just doesn’t work. This wood becomes mold – literally mold all the way through – slice it open anywhere, and it’s all mold – and any attempt to seal in the moisture causes it to mold over. I paint on Anchorseal, and mold grows thickly beneath it across the entire surface and pushes the sealant up. I put it in a bag of shavings and pull it out coated in thick green fuzz a few weeks later. I’ve actually had the best luck letting fig air dry, with no preparations. I have a bowl I turned – the first large one I turned – that I never sealed, and it’s barely warped, and has no checking. That was August 1st, about a month and a week ago. The mold that had formed on the Anchorsealed blank it was turned from went all through the bowl. Air-drying has at least gotten rid of the smell. The other half of that log is on the floor of the garage, also Anchorsealed, though not cut into a blank. The sealed side is almost black with green mold.

The piece I painted up in BLO actually seems to be doing really well, but I need to check again. I don’t think it’s molding up. I recently made walnut ink, and one of the steps at the end is to add some vinegar to keep mold from forming. I just found after 2 days of not noticing it, and less than a week after making it, that it had formed huge clusters of green mold floating on the top. I did my best to draw them all out with strips of paper towels, but there’s a residue on the surface that won’t be extracted. I’m going to add some vinegar to hopefully kill it, and maybe eventually pour it into a different jar through a coffee filter to try to get as much of the mold and spores out of it as I can. I’m also thinking of spraying vinegar on my fig log blanks to try to inhibit this rampant mold spread. Maybe I can seal them after that. I’ll try both ways.

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

Very interesting….I’ve never had wood that prone to fungus. Where did you get that from?

You might also try puting just a bit of diluted bleach in the bags or storage media or on the wood itself…..it has to be dilute as pure bleach encourages the growth while diluted bleach kills it (go figure??) Also copper is an excellent anti fungal – as it is also used for weather treating wood….you might get some CopperX (a tree spray or find some wood treatment copper) and try spraying a bit of that on the wood or in the bags or storage media (Copper is not as toxic as some of the chemical anti fungals can be…it is toxic in large amounts though). The only trouble with copper is that it can stain the wood a bit…so try a test first.

Lastly, I suppose you may need to consider another wood for turning. There are some that just will not provide or become good turning media….like very soft woods (pine and cedar for example) and very long grain wood (oak is one….and cork oak is one that definitely will not work). I still try now and then to experiment with combinations and segments of these woods….You might want to try cutting the stuff you have and laminating it to something else (you would have to dry it a bit first though)...

-- Woodworking.....My small slice of heaven!

reggie – Ficus microcarpa (Indian Laurel Fig, AKA Green Island Fig, AKA Cuban Laurel, AKA Chinese Banyan) is virtually a weed here in LA. I have a bunch of old blog posts here about finding it and studying it, but suffice it to say that someone on my block kept putting it out by the road, and I kept picking it up :) I want to try every wood I can get my hands on, especially the stuff you can’t buy anywhere for whatever reason, and I’d been waiting to cut some of the larger limbs from my neighbor’s house behind me that were encroaching on my garage. I lost that chance when the telephone repairmen cut all the big ones away and hauled them off while I was at work, so I leapt at the chance to haul the big stuff home.

The only info I’ve ever found on ficus regarding turning is that it deteriorates rapidly and is not good for woodworking. I like to test everything myself, if interested enough, so I’ve just been going at it anyway. One of the things it’s really doing for me is providing a sort of bootcamp. It’s such a crappy wood to work in, I’m learning all of ways to recover from mistakes, fight against problems, and even how to just deal with losing a piece, which is a skill in itself. Here are some posts from my huge set (I know it’s a bear to dig through 120 posts :)

http://lumberjocks.com/gfixler/blog/9274 – finding the 3rd load
http://lumberjocks.com/gfixler/blog/10188 – making and sealing a blank
http://lumberjocks.com/gfixler/blog/10396 – turning a large bowl

It is a pretty wood, really, when finished, so I was hoping I could salvage something, and it does appear at least plausible. I’m definitely going to try vinegar, diluted bleach, and copper (thanks for those last 2 suggestions!), and we’ll see what happens. I was even curious to see if the mold could end up in some way like spalting, making me prettier wood, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Here’s an example of a dish turned in it: http://lumberjocks.com/gfixler/blog/10079

It’s halfway pretty, and never molded over because it was so thin. It dried quickly enough. I didn’t do anything but take the dry blank, turn it, leave it out for a bit in the air, then rub some shellac into it – probably not the best finish for this wood. I don’t think I ever got a shot of it later, before a coworker took a fancy to it and I gave it to him, but it curled up pretty impressively, like a potato chip, with a sine-wave curve around the rim. But anyway, I’m just screwing around in this wood to learn to turn better. It’s like free scrap wood that’s large enough for me to max out my lathe in both directions. I’m not considering it for any final pieces, and I don’t really see the worth in trying to dry it properly.

Thanks for the suggestions!

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

You could always drill a set of parallel holes along the crack and use leather shoe string to stitch it up.

-- Those that say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

jeff – I just saw one of those on our front page here recently and loved the idea. I have enough checking wood over here to make a whole career out of it :)

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

I know what you mean Gary. I try turning the wildest stuff. I’ve even turned polymers and mixed medias (soft metals laminated to woods…and plastic wood mixtures…a time or two)...some with moderate success…some dismall failures….but I just like to see what comes about….I wouldn’t call myself an artist….at least not in the vein of folks that show their works…and get talked about in galleries. I do turn some interesting forms and some nice stuff now and then….have sold some (although I wonder if the folks feel sorry for me…ROFL)

I like to experiment which is art in its purist form…I try to see what the creator of the piece sees or envisions….My stuff is something I try to do on a similar vein…but not a copy. That is one of the things that draws me to woodturning. It is an evolving media….and there is tons of room for experimentation….I am playing with off center turning…eccentric turning….open media turning….different sized segments….stained glass inlays….you name it …anything I can do to make something different and interesting…

So I see your failures the same as I see mine….an attempt to do something new and interesting….and so you keep trying and pushing the envelope…some work out…some don’t…so if this wood experiment of yours doesn’t you can move on to something else that may…

-- Woodworking.....My small slice of heaven!

Gary thats a bummer. There is nothing I hate more than working for hours on a piece and having it crack on me.

I recentally turned a black oak bowl 14” in diameter and 8” in height. I took the pith out of the log and I left the bowls wall thickness about 1 1/4” . I put 3 coats of anchorseal on on each of the two bowls I made. I put it away to dry and my goal was to finish it a few months later. Well, that will never happen. It had massive cracks all over it, ON BOTH BOWLS!!!!! I couldnt beleive it.

Anyway, I feel your pain.

Take care
Rob

-- Whether You Think You Can or You Think You Can't, YOU ARE RIGHT!!!

Right on, reggie. That’s how I see my stuff right now – anyone who buys it is pitying me :) I am trying to actually do some things I can sell. I’m the eternal student, far more interested in how things work, and trying out random ideas and making test after test to learn everything I can than in actually producing a final piece. It’s hard work for me to finally finish something and say “this is done.” I tend to go to the last few steps, then stop forever, and busy myself with a neverending stream of new things. I’m surrounded by half (or less) completed projects. It can be frustrating, but learning new things by tearing them open to study their insides is so much more fun than completing a project! I haven’t done any mixed-media stuff. How’s that soft metal work out? Does it dull the tools quickly?

Rob – thankfully, I’d only spent about a half hour on it, and wasn’t much enjoying it as I worked in it. Ficus isn’t joyful to turn. I just wanted to test my new tools, so this was always just a test – never a final piece. Still, my heart does weep a little when I see even a brief, unfinished, never-to-be-finished piece split itself entirely in half. I can’t believe your oak bowls cracked like that! Did you get the wood when it was freshly cut? I’m wondering if it sat around awhile. Maybe the checks were forming then. I will say this, though. Oak can really move, and it’s unbelievably strong. The only wood I’ve ever had pinch my saw blade was red oak. I was just ripping a 1×4 or 1×6 into two pieces, and I realized past the blade there was no kerf slit. It was closing right up. That’s dangerous kick-back territory, and I sweat the last few feet of ripping. It worked out, but it was tense. The two boards were like shallow rocking chair bottoms. Very strong wood with lots of tension stored inside it. I guess you don’t have any interested in filling the cracks? If you used something contrasting, it might come out a bit artsy. Those are some pretty big bowls.

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

rough turn then soak in denatured alcohol for 24 hours no cracks & no distortion wrap in brown paper bag up to over rim tape up place upside down on rack for 2 weeks then it will be ready to finish

Wow, hunter. That is quite a specific procedure! Does the alcohol replace the water and then evaporate more quickly from the cell walls? Where did you hear about this technique? I’ve not heard it yet. I’m intrigued.

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

Gary, in case you haven’t looked into it more yet, here are a few sites I’ve looked at in the past on alcohol drying. Great info and it looks like it works although I haven’t tried it yet. Hunter summed it up well.

http://alcoholsoaking.blogspot.com/
http://www.wnywoodturners.com/articles/alcodrying/alcodrying.htm

-- Dale Manning, Carthage, NY

Thanks, Dale! This is an exciting development in my wood turning and drying exploits. I’ll have to check – I think I just picked up a gallon of denatured alcohol the other day, though it might have been mineral spirits. I’ll get a gallon or two if I not, find some nice tupperware containers, and give this a go. I also have a very large roll of brown paper that’s been looking for a use for years, as well as about 6 rolls of masking tape that I’ve not gotten around to opening in over a year now. I might just have all the materials on hand to experiment immediately. Thanks to you and hunter both for my next series of experiments!

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator

the alcohol makes it dry very quickly evaporating moisture i do it all the time also you can use it (denatured alcohol) over & over again when you soak roughed out bowl make sure to cover the top of container the alcohol will evaporate. mixed woods in alcohol will not stain other wood

a cheap plastic trash can works better if alcohol does not fill above roughed bowl add a piece of scrap wood in to raise alcohol level

check bowl in about 2 weeks if alcohol smell is gone open your present and finish it send me a picture when your finished with it

I’m going to try this too. Thanks for the links above.

-- Jerry--A man can never have enough tools or clamps