If you have any experience with turning green lumber, you probably also have experience with throwing away bowls that have split or cracked beyond the point of repair. You may have also encountered a piece that has warped so much during the drying process that finish turning your bowl would be an exercise in futility.
To the rescue is a myriad of drying methods that are used by many turners so reach the same end result, dry bowl rough outs that arent cracked or overly warped.
Before I started using denatured alcohol (DNA) to dry bowls, I used paper bags with a handful of shavings in the bowl to slow down the drying process. My success was about 50/50. As Ive gotten busier and begun turning wood that is more green, Ive found that my bagging method was less and less effective. This spurred a search to increase my success rate with turning green wood. The two methods I was down to trying was boiling the wood or DNA soaking.
While I like fire as much as the next guy, I dont have a great area to set up a propane turkey fryer to boil a large container of water for drying my bowls. In addition to that, I normally have to do my work in relatively short periods of time. I seldom have a full day or afternoon to dedicate to roughing out bowls and then boiling them.
The appeal of DNA soaking for me is that I can drop rough outs in the solution as I finish them up and can forget about them for a while until I either need to add more rough outs to the tub or remember to pull the currently soaking bowls out. For my larger tub of DNA, I wrap the top with plastic wrap to help seal the tub and prevent the alcohol from evaporating. This probably isnt required, but its cheap insurance that doesnt take long to apply.
Soaking Method:
- Put roughed turned piece into DNA bath
- Leave it for at least 24 hours, longer for more green pieces (no real quantitative guidelines here...)
- Remove piece and pour excess back into tub
- Let dry for 15 - 30 minutes
- Wrap outside and rim of bowl only with paper
- Store bowls upside down allowing air to reach inside of bowl (sticker similarly to dimensional lumber)
- Piece can be finish turned as soon as two weeks after removal from Alcohol.
Who doesnt love pictures to go along with instructions? Yeah, thats what I thought!
Supplies:
- 5 gallon bucket for pieces up to 10" diameter
- 13 gallon tub for pieces up to 18" diameter (Agri Supply)
- Denatured Alcohol (Agri Supply, chemical wholesaler)
Additional Information:
- David Smith has written a fair amount about DNA drying.
- AAW forum
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