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Curing wood
Hi Dave - Look at them this way. Now they have
character----------George |
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#2
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On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 06:35:55 -0400, "Dave" dave@nowhere hurled these
words of wisdom into the ether: I've recently taken up wood sculpting. I cut down several dying turkey oaks on my property and have produced several works. I'm finding now that many are splitting and it looks like I'm going to lose all my work. Any info on drying out wood would be appreciated. I usually work with 4 ft by 20 in dia. pieces. Well, working with your wood still in the round, you can be fairly sure of it splitting as it dries...that's pretty much the nature of the beast. The way to avoid that is to find a bitter tree and use half of the trunk. You'll still not avoid all of the splitting, but perhaps a lot of the larger ones. - Chuck *#:^) chaz3913(AT)yahoo(dot)com ANTI-SPAM Sig - Remove NOSPAM from email to reply September 11, 2001 - Never Forget |
#3
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Evenin' Dave: Most "Chainsaw carvings" I've seen have cracks in them.
As to drying the trees, the rule of thumb is 1 year for each inch of diameter. So to llow your trees to dry out completely, you would have to seal the log ends and then let them set, protected from the sun and off the ground for 20 years. Or, just accept the cracks as natural. The Other Bruce =============================== "Dave" dave@nowhere wrote in message ... I've recently taken up wood sculpting. I cut down several dying turkey oaks on my property and have produced several works. I'm finding now that many are splitting and it looks like I'm going to lose all my work. Any info on drying out wood would be appreciated. I usually work with 4 ft by 20 in dia. pieces. |
#4
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Hello Dave Drying large wood in the round will always end up splitting, I grew up in Europe and I have seen life size sculptures in Europe that had almost no splits or cracks in them and they where made up from smaller pieces of wood like 4x6 etc. and left without a center in the sculpture except the very top. I do think that you should go a similar way if you do want to have larger sculptures that have no splitting in them. Have your logs milled, dried and then use large dovetail or glue, etc. Or work the logs like the native woodcarvers do, basically split the log in halve and take out the pit, you will still have some splitting but a lot less than if you attempt to work a whole round log, hope this is some help to you. Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo Dave wrote: I've recently taken up wood sculpting. I cut down several dying turkey oaks on my property and have produced several works. I'm finding now that many are splitting and it looks like I'm going to lose all my work. Any info on drying out wood would be appreciated. I usually work with 4 ft by 20 in dia. pieces. |
#5
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There are several ways of curing the wood. A friend of mine soaks the logs in water for a year before drying them, not sure what else he does after that. I don't usually use wood as large as you are but if you want to go ahead and start carving just paint it with glycerine each time you finish carving. If you do smaller carvings like I do, I just wait until the wife is not around and microwave them in one minute intervals and wipe up the water between blasts. ( three or four minutes for small blocks) I have cured black walnut slabs by putting a spacers between the slabs and sprinkling rock salt all over them. Just be sure they are in plastic wrap with a drainage groove along the bottom because the water will just flow out of them and you don't want outside moisture drawn in. You don't want to wait twenty years do you ? On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 06:35:55 -0400, "Dave" dave@nowhere wrote: I've recently taken up wood sculpting. I cut down several dying turkey oaks on my property and have produced several works. I'm finding now that many are splitting and it looks like I'm going to lose all my work. Any info on drying out wood would be appreciated. I usually work with 4 ft by 20 in dia. pieces. |
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