Curing wood

Hi Dave - Look at them this way. Now they have
character----------George

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
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September 11, 2001 - Never Forget

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.

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.

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.