{"id":1342,"date":"2016-04-13T04:00:30","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T08:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woodturningpens.com\/?p=1342"},"modified":"2016-04-13T04:00:30","modified_gmt":"2016-04-13T08:00:30","slug":"1342-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woodturningpens.com\/1342-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Green-Turned Sycamore Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
About 6 weeks or so ago, I decided to continue my exploration of the “green-wood” turning process. Up to now, all the wood I have turned into bowls on the lathe, mostly using exclusively turning tools from the Easy Wood Tool<\/a> company, has been dried either in commercial kilns, or more commonly, very slowly over years of waiting as the wood is stored in my basement at relatively consistent temperature, no direct light, and the typically higher humidity common to the southern United States. The advantage of dry-wood turning is that the piece is very unlikely to warp or check (a fancy wood-turning word for cracking) and the bowl blank can be transformed into a finished bowl in one day quite easily. The disadvantages include the fact that most commercially sold wood is sold green, usually waxed to slow drying, so the dry-wood turner has to wait potentially years before experimenting with an interesting new species; dry wood is more difficult to turn mechanically than green wood (green wood cuts very quickly although it does make a mess with water spraying out depending on how wet the wood is); and if the green-wood isn’t dried properly and slowly the blank can check before it is even turned, leaving you with expensive firewood, depending on your tolerance for “unique” pieces.<\/p>\n Up to now I have always been more afraid of the hazards of green-wood turning that attracted by the benefits. But as I have gained practice and competence in dry-wood turning, I have decided to slowly start to experiment with the green-turning process. I made four small dishes from green Cucumber Magnolia and that turned out pretty well as the wood did not warp dramatically during drying and it didn’t check at all. Next, I then decided to use a larger piece of American Lacewood, which is in fact Sycamore that has been quarter-sawn to highlight the vivid ray patterns.<\/p>\n The blank was sold to me fairly well rounded so I didn’t have to cut it on the bandsaw. I simply mounted it on the face-plate to cut the divot on what would be the back of the finished piece to mount the blank on the lathe with the Nova <\/a>chuck. Then I reversed the piece on the Nova chuck and cut it roughly to the shape I thought I wanted being sure to leave pretty thick walls all around so as to have sufficient material left to remove during final shaping once the piece dried completely. I have read that one should always leave at least 10% of the original dimension of the blank, so a 10″ blank should always have at least 1″ walls left during green-turning.<\/p>\n I placed the rough turned piece in a paper grocery bag filled with wood shavings, closed the bag and set it aside to dry. This method has worked well with the Cucumber Magnolia previously. After about a week I opened the bag to check the piece and discovered something quite interesting. One side of the piece, the side with the most pronounced ray fleck pattern, was still quite wet, over 40% moisture on the surface according to my moisture meter. But the other half of the same piece of wood was much drier, about exactly twice as dry with the moisture meter indicating about 20% moisture. Both sides were still too wet to finish but I had never heard of wood drying in this way and in fact I still haven’t found anyone else who talks about this drying effect.<\/p>\n