# So you want to turn green wood



## alindobra (Oct 3, 2007)

*Introduction to green woodturning*

Some of you sent me private messages or posted comments asking about the kind of woodturning I like to do. My first reply was a video with 20 minutes summary of how I turn a goblet (the blog entry containing the video is here: http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/alindobra/blog/2719 ). While the video is spectacular, it helps little in understanding how YOU can learn how to turn. The explanations in the video are scant and my elbow covers a lot of the action. This blog series is designed to expand the shallow explanations and add more observations/knowledge.

Throughout this blog series, I will provide my experience turning green wood. While I might make references to various sources (books, web resources, etc.), most of the thinks I will talk about are my experience. Since I have been turning for less than 2 years and seriously for only 1 year, you have to understand that the opinions I express are not definitive. I am still refining my methods and there are a lot of things I do not yet know or I know only partially. You should use this blog series as an invitation to experiment yourself and, through comments, to share your experience. If you find the series interesting, please drop an occasional comment-it will keep me motivated. Questions also help a lot (thanks TechGuy for your batch of comments) it figuring out what to talk about.

*Motivation for turning green wood*

1. The biggest nuisance I have to deal with in my shop (I'm sure most of you will agree) is dust. While most machinery come with decent dust collection nowadays, lathes are an exception. Most dust collection setups for a lathe are improvisations that will help a little but not reduce the dust to an acceptable level. While fancy face masks that filter the air are available on the market, I have no desire to work with an "astronaut helmet" on my head for several hours. This is motivation enough for me to turn green wood.

2. Green wood is free. Yes, free. In my town, they cut so many trees every day that they have trouble getting rid of them fast enough. Even more, you have to pay to dispose of the wood; when asked if I can take a piece of the tree they are cutting, I am offered the whole tree delivered to my house if I want. It never happened to me to be refused as much wood as I want when I asked. Usually, most people would pay a reasonable fee to get the "good stuff". When turning, at least for the first 3-6 months, you want the wood to be absolutely free since you will be reticent to use it as practice if you payed significant money on it. Since in this case only lots of practice makes perfect you do not want to be distracted by the fact that you payed for the wood so you'd better get something out of it.

3. The resulting turnings look more natural. I usually like to keep the bark on my pieces, and definitely to keep the sapwood. That is jut not possible with dried wood (the bark never stays on on thick pieces of wood, even with care). In this day an age when we have CNC lathes, it is hard to make something that a machine cannot. Making thin bowls from green wood is still outside the realm of production woodturning. Not being told by friends and family that they saw a turning like yours at Walmart is priceless.

4. While turning green wood, the tool stays cooler. That means less trips to the grinder and less opportunities for burned fingers.

5. Turning green wood is spectacular. Larger shavings can be taken and they literally fly off the lathe. Most of my friends are utterly impressed at the site (and I get a wholly mess in my shop).

*Grain orientation in green wood turning*

When turning wood in general, the rotation axis is either perpendicular on the direction of the grain, called side grain turning, or along the grain, called end grain turning. A lot of things are different in these two types of turning, things that become serious considerations when a piece is designed:

1. Behavior of the cutting tool. On side grain turnings, in a single rotation the tool moves from a cut along the grain to a cross cut and back. This introduces a small non-uniformity in the behavior of the tool. For end grain turnings, the cut is more uniform but not necessarily better. Depending how the tool is presented to the wood, a cut against end grain might be attempted, cut that can result in a lot of frustration since the effort of holding the tool is significantly greater than a cut that does not go against end grain.

2. Rules and knowhow. There are a lot of good rules for side grain turning and a lot of good rules for spindle turning. The most important rule of all is to cut with the bevel when using a gouge. While technically the wood turns in the same way for spindle turning and end grain turning, spindle turning consists mostly in decorative elements rather then large concavities. While cutting with the bevel always works for side grain and spindle turning, it might be awful, at least on some woods, for end grain turning. The problem is that going with the bevel might mean going directly into the end grain and producing mostly dust. The ability to use various techniques depends on the wood characteristics; you effectively have to learn how to turn each type of wood (i.e. to experiment a little before starting on your best piece). What all this means is that end grain turning is a lot more experimental then side grain and spindle turning.

3. Wood movement After turning the wood green, you have to let it dry. In the drying process, the wood moves, which produces deformations of the turning. Side grain and end grain turnings deform fundamentally differently. All side grain pieces will shrink a lot across the grain at not at all along it . Since the rim of the turning contains both side and end grain, the piece will take an oval shape. For this reason, the side grain pieces are first rough turned, dried (2 weeks to 6 months depending on method) and then finish turned to get the round shape. End grain turnings have only end grain, so the turning will tend to deform to accommodate the larger shrinking tangentially with respect to radial shrinking. This shrinking process, especially if a full section of the tree has been used, can produce spectacular bending of the wood. Take a look at this project: http://lumberjocks.com/projects/3799 to see an example of interesting bending due to wood shrinkage. While the oval shape for side grain is undesirable, the bending of end grain is, in my opinion, desirable. This means that an end grain piece can be turned in one sitting. If the wall thickness is 1/8" or less, the bowl will dry in 1-2 days and can be readily finished. This means 2 days from start to finish rather than almost 6 months for side grain.

4. Containment of the pith. The second rule of woodturning, after cutting with the bevel, is *not to* include the pith. The reason for this is the fact that the piece will almost certainly develop at least a small crack at the pith. This is happening since the wood around the pith shrinks differently than the rest of the wood (shrinks more). In side grain turning it is customary to avoid the pith. This means that the diameter of the wood being turned has to be more than twice the depth of the bowl. To get most of the grain pattern and interesting bending of end grain turning, the pith needs to be included (and prominently displayed). This inevitably leads to complications with the drying. What I noticed is that, if the wall thickness is below 1/4" everywhere, the effect of the crack originating at the pith is minimized to the point that it is not worth even filling. If the pith is included in the end grain piece, the wall thickness better be less than 1/4" anyway otherwise the drying stress is not dissipated by deforming the piece but by large cracks. Turning the bowl thick, then drying it is not a viable option for end grain unless the whole piece is cut from a piece far away from the pith (i.e. from a very large diameter tree). Moreover, the wall thickness better be uniform otherwise cracks will develop as well. Getting uniform thickness for a piece requires a lot of practice but the result is a better quality piece.

The four points above essentially suggest that end grain green wood turning is a nuisance. The main advantages though are very little wood preparation, ability to finish the piece in a couple o days and interesting looking pieces (end grain turning is relatively rare). Since was always drawn to hard things in my life, end grain turning is by far my favorite. This blog series will mostly be about end grain turning but some of the observations and techniques should hold for side grain turning as well.

Since this blog entry is getting rather large, I will continue in a separate entry with stock preparation, mounting the piece on the lathe and tool sharpening in the next episode.

The best resource on this subject is the book of Michael O'Donnell "Turning Green Wood". I strongly recommend you acquire this book if you want to turn green wood.

Thanks for looking,
Alin


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## rikkor (Oct 17, 2007)

alindobra said:


> *Introduction to green woodturning*
> 
> Some of you sent me private messages or posted comments asking about the kind of woodturning I like to do. My first reply was a video with 20 minutes summary of how I turn a goblet (the blog entry containing the video is here: http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/alindobra/blog/2719 ). While the video is spectacular, it helps little in understanding how YOU can learn how to turn. The explanations in the video are scant and my elbow covers a lot of the action. This blog series is designed to expand the shallow explanations and add more observations/knowledge.
> 
> ...


Great write-up Alin. Thanks for taking the time.


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## alindobra (Oct 3, 2007)

*Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *

As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.

1. *Stock Selection *

The first step in woodturning is, obviously, selecting a piece of wood that you will turn. I prefer to keep the wood in large pieces since in this way only the ends will go bad (crack) but I still have a lot of good wood. Here is my wood pile, to get an idea:



While painting the end grain of logs with some wood sealer helps (I use paraffin wax softened in paint thinner) the logs will crack anyway-it will just take longer,

Since you very much have to adapt to the type of wood when turning end-grain pieces, I usually prepare several raw pieces that I turn within few days (before they go bad). I keep a variety of woods in my pile so that I can pick something I feel like turning (as opposed to whatever I have). This time I selected the lower part of a camphor tree (about 1 foot off the ground). This piece is interesting since it has two main branches of roughly the same size. The idea is to select a 3" piece and try to turn a large (almost 16") platter and from the rest to make a some small wood bowls. 


The ends of the two branches are bad for at least 8" so I have to throw them (i.e. recycle them). Here is a picture taken my by 5 (almost 6) years old photographer (my son).



While cutting the log I try to think what I will make out of it. Since I will mount the wood on the lathe using a faceplate (more about this latter), I have to leave about 1"-1 1/2" extra wood at the base. To true up the top, I leave at least an extra 1/2". That means I cut the piece about 2" taller than the intended dimension of the turning. When you cut the wood with the chainsaw (the best method but a decent hand saw would do as well) I try to select the interesting part for the rim. I decide which part is the top and which part is the bottom as well.

For natural edge end grain turning, the wood preparation consist only in cutting the log across. The only concern is to keep the angle close to 90% and the two sides reasonably parallel (helps latter).

2. *Mounting the raw wood on the lathe*

Once I cut the log in sections, I select one that I turn and get ready to mount it on the lathe for initial turning. I first put the wood on the workbench and try to select a reasonable center for the piece. I like to do the initial turning between centers. My main motivation is the fact that my lathe cannot go below 600rpm in speed and, as I explain below, I can make even large pieces behave at 600rpm when I turn between the centers but I would get disastrous results If I mount the piece initially using a faceplate.

*Why do initial turning between centers?*

When I started woodturning, I was installing a faceplate on the blank as the first step in turning a log. While you can reasonably center the faceplate on the blank to get decent bowls as a result, I had two main problems with this method:

1. The cross cut had to be truly orthogonal on the piece otherwise piece would rotate around a slanted axis (violent shaking of the lathe immediately results if the wood is spinning at 600rpm)

2. No matte how careful I was with getting the crosscut and center the faceplate on the log, unless the wood was almost round, I still got enough vibration to scare me (had the piece fly from the lathe a couple of times). The process of getting a good position of the faceplate and cutting the log took a good 1/2 of an hour or more (takes the fun out of woodturning).

At some point it just struck me: I should mount the piece between centers initially instead of faceplate. Now, this might be even a bigger disaster than faceplate mounting since the spur is less likely to keep a piece of wood from flying than 4-8 screws you can put in a face plate. For this to work, something else is crucial: spend a couple of minutes to center the piece between centers so there is almost no vibration. It is not the geometrical center that matters but having the rotation axis go through (or close by) the gravity center of the piece. To do this, I apply the following procedure:

1. I guess an initial center of the piece and make a small puncture on the top of the piece.

2. I put the tip of the spur in the marked point and guesstimate where the tailstock has to go. I do not tighten the tailstock all the way and have the piece suspended between the two tips but without the teeth of the spur bitting into the wood. In this way, the piece is free to rotate without much resistance (the motor has enough friction so the piece would nor rotate if the spur goes all the way in).

3. I rotate the piece around and let it free. If the piece takes less than 3 seconds to go from the highest spot to the lowest spot, I move either the spur or the tailstock. One of these points has to move lower when the wood is in the lowest energy spot. I decide which one to move in order to make the face towards the spur be as orthogonal on the rotation axis as possible.

4. If the piece is centered. I tighten the tailstock and let the lathe run for 1-2 seconds. If it looks like the rotation is almost vibration free, I move to start turning.

Here is a picture with the piece balanced between centers:



Now the piece is ready to do the initial turning. What I do during rough turning is to give the piece a rough form and to prepare it for the mounting on the lathe that will allow me to turn the outside and the inside.

*3. Faceplate Turning *

In order to finish the turning of the piece, the wood needs to be attached to the head of the lathe securely. While initially the tailstock acan be used, eventually the tailstock needs to be removed.

There are two methods to mount the piece on the headstock alone: faceplates and chucks. Chucks are all the rage for the last 10 years. They are very versatile, come with all kinds of accessories, etc. I prefer to use a faceplate for the following reasons:

1. A good faceplate is 30$ while a decent chuck is 200$ (without accessories)

2. The faceplate grabs the wood with 4-8 screws while the chuck mechanically holds the wood. I feel a lot more secure with a faceplate, especially for larger pieces. I explain below how to install well a faceplate, as easily as a chuck.

The main disadvantage of a faceplate is the fact that 1" of the wood is wasted. Since the wood I use is free, this is a non-issue.

*Mounting the rough turned piece on the faceplate*

In order to mount the faceplate on the piece, i true up the bottom of the piece (I make a small concavity on the bottom so the faceplate touches on a ring). I leave a spigot that fits snugly inside the whole in the faceplate. To get the size right, I keep a wrench of the exact size next to the lathe and measure while I turn. To install a chuck you have to do something similar. If the spigot is too tall, i cut it with a coping saw.

Here are some pictures with the spigot formed:




and here one with the faceplate install on top of the spigot:



To mount the faceplate, I use 1" sheet metal screws (they grab the wood really well and they do not need predrilled wholes-they will not split the wood). To install the screws, I use a corded drill. Putting in the screws goes as fast as installing a chuck. With a little care, when installed on the lathe, the rough turned piece will be almost true:



When turning, you have to remember that the screws go into the wood for about 3/4". Once turned, the remaining wood on the faceplate can be used a a friction chuck so the bottom of the piece can be turned as well:



To recenter the piece when reversing it, I use a piece of metal that I keep fixed and gauge the difference between the closest and furthest away points (without the lathe turning, of course). Once I get within 1/32" I start turning the piece.

In the next blog entry in the series, I'll talk about actual turning by describing tools and how to use them (with pictures, of course).

You can see some of the things described in this blog entry in the video in my other blog entry:
http://lumberjocks.com/jocks/alindobra/blog/2719

Thanks for looking,
Alin


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## Grumpy (Nov 9, 2007)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Thanks for sharing Alin. Interesting result.


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## alindobra (Oct 3, 2007)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Well Grumpy, I just managed to destroy the piece while sanding it. Nothing ventured nothing gained, I guess.

Alin


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## Karson (May 9, 2006)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Alin a great tutorial. Looking great.


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## gizmodyne (Mar 15, 2007)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Interesting tutorial. I have close to zero interest in learning woodturning, but I find it fascinating to watch.


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## alindobra (Oct 3, 2007)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the comments guys,

Alin


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## Jimthecarver (Jan 14, 2008)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Alin thats to bad about the piece I was looking forward to seeing it finished. Your blogs and videos has helped me and has me thinking in a different direction. Come to think of it after seeing your video I was doing things backwards….lol, Thanks again.


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## alindobra (Oct 3, 2007)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Jim,

I kind of got carried away with the project and made some small mistakes that ended up breaking the piece after more than 3 hours of work on it. Well, if you do not take chances you cannot ever improve. I will talk about what happened when I describe various kinds of cuts and how different types of wood behave when the cuts are used on them.

Alin


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## rikkor (Oct 17, 2007)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the post Alin. And I appreciate that you share your failures with us. (We all have them!) Still a lot of good info here.


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## Ovidiu (Jul 20, 2011)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Very interesting all the articles about green wood. Especially recently I started turning wood. I'm from Romania and there are no people with experience in this field… I have a personal question: by name look like you or your family come from Eastern Europe - is that true?


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## DavidFarm (Jan 3, 2012)

alindobra said:


> *Stock preparation and mounting on the lathe *
> 
> As I mentioned in the first blog entry in this series, I will mostly focus my attention on end grain natural edge woodturning. In this blog entry I will explain how I prepare the wood for lathe work and how I mount it on the lathe. These blog entries reflect mostly my experience and preferences for woodturning. Hopefully you can draw inspiration form this but ultimately you have to find your own way.
> 
> ...


Thanks for sharing. Some good ideas!


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