Friends,
I am carving a large bowl our of green wood. I have been working on it for about a week. After carving, I put it in a plastic bag. Well, now the bowl has some black stuff and some white stuff growing on it.
What do you recommend?
I would guess it is bleach. Do I put it on now or after the wood is dry. Right now it is very very wet. I am almost finished carving it.
Should I switch to a paper bag to dry it?
During my first few tries at carving bowls from green wood, I used Rip Mann’s technique of keeping the bowl in a plastic bag. When I finished carving, I finished it with mineral oil and put it in the plastic bag for a half of each day for a week. I kept adding mineral oil. No cracks on those tries. Also, I never got any mold or mildew.
I could use some advice.
Thanks,
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Replies
Mel,
Mmmm a science project. Tell us more. What kind of wood is it? Sugar maple? Honey locust? Black cherry? Some woods may be more receptive to fungi (you know I am a fun guy) than others. Sugars, and starches, tasty.
Bleach, or lysol. Maybe shellac. A friend just told me about his good luck in "drying" a gunstock he worked out of green wood that he saturated (soaked) in alcohol, then let air dry for a week or so. Amazingly (to me, at least) it did not check. The idea is that the alcohol binds with the water in the wood, then, all quickly evaporates, yet at a rate that does not check the wood. Have you heard of this technique? Seems that the alcohol would inhibit the growth of unpleasant organisms, as well. Maybe you should pour a bit of bourbon, ok, cheap vodka, well alright shellac thinner, in to the bag while the bowl is resting between carving sessions.
Ray
Ray,
I have read a lot about different methods of drying wet wood without it cracking. I never heard the idea of using alcohol. Interesting. I'll put some alcohol in the bowl as it sits in its bag overnight, as you suggested.The wood is sycamore. I have never used it before. It carves nicely when wet. Not much interesting grain. But it was free. I have put lots of hours of heavy carving into this bowl. A friend gave me a two and a half pound mallet. Together with my 60mm #7, I have just about finished it. My right arm is a bit tired. Great workout, but highly localized. Thank you.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,
I think you will find the quartersawn figure of sycamore quite attractive. It is similar to lacewood, but not as flashy. About like beech, but more contrasty. An old time name for sycamore is "buttonwood", apparently, it is well suited for that purpose, for some reason.
I had not heard about using dish detergent to dry green wood without checking.
Ray
Ray,
Thanks for the info on buttonwood. Mine is not highly figured, nor is it quartersawn, but it has been nice to carve.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel:
That sounds like some home-grown spalting going on. People pay a lot for that sort of thing. Our friend Skip told me you could produce your own spalted maple by burying the wood in your compost bin for some indeterminate period. If you can bear to take the chance, maybe you could give it a try and report back on the results. In the interest of science, of course.
Cheers,
Tom W
I see the possibility that the black stuff you see might be a toxic black mold. Went to a seminar once on black mold. To treat it, the exterminator covered himself completely with tight clothes and an oxygen mask. I think they sprayed on a borax of some kind. They said Clorox wouldn't do any good. You might check with an microbiology department at a local university.
Edited 2/1/2008 9:56 pm ET by Tinkerer3
Here's a link to Dave Smith's blog on everything you always wanted to know about alcohol soaking. I'm a turner, but after pricing the amount of alcohol (denatured of course, and not just ANY denatured) I decided I just wasn't in that much of a hurry. As for the mold problem, I think it was the plastic bag. Traps too much moisture.
http://alcoholsoaking.blogspot.com/
It sounds like mold. I'd wash it with dish detergent and water and a scrub brush. Afterward, keep it soaking in a solution of 50/50 dish detergent and water. When you get done carving just take it out and let it dry. This is a drying system developed by turners in recent years and has worked well for me on carved pieces too. I'd guess that it works similarly to the alcohol soaking system... but in any case it does work. If you are a fast carver make sure that you leave it in the detergent solution for at least a couple of weeks altogether, even if you finish it before then. Some guys who work on big pieces froth the solution and just cover the piece with the foam and let it dry but I think the immersion is a more reliable system if you can arrange it. Since the wood floats you probably need to weight the piece to keep it fully immersed.
I have found this to work well even on the lips of spoons where the grain is mostly end grain and the wall is fairly thin. That makes for a pretty tough test.
BFN,
Very interesting. Yesterday I had never heard of soaking in alcohol or in soapy water. Now I have two more tools for the arsenal.My bowl is just about finished being carved out. Just a few more hours.You said to let it soak in a solution of half dishwashing soap and half water. Is that correct? That would be a LOT of soap. I am not criticizing, just asking to make sure I understood.Then you said to dry it. Just leave it out in the air? Put it in a paper bag? What about Lysol or bleach? Why isn't that recommended? Discoloration?Thank you very much.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Yes it is a lot of soap and you can use less but you'll be happier with your results if you don't. I have just left items in the air to dry (after rinsing and wiping off with rags or towels). Putting items in paper bags would not be harmful but seems unnecessary after the soap treatment.
Bleach would kill most growing things but is likely to gray the wood colors... which may be a plus but mostly is not. Lysol would be a new experiment as I don't know of anyone who ever tried it.
Try this search for lots of additional info on both the soapy water and alcohol methods.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLR,GGLR:2006-17,GGLR:en&q=woodturning%2c+dish+detergent+drying
BTW microwaving is really quick and cheap and hard to beat for small items. It does require careful attention especially toward the end of the process. You have to be checking all the time to complete the drying and avoid burning. It takes some hands on attention (but it's great for us impatient souls).
Edited 2/2/2008 12:38 pm ET by bigfootnampa
Edited 2/2/2008 12:42 pm ET by bigfootnampa
Big Foot,
I have already read some of the articles in the web search on the soap and alcohol drying methods. VERY INTERESTING. I am going to use the soap method. You have changed my life.
Thank you.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
YOU'RE WELCOME Mel. I'm glad I could help.
Clay
Clay,
Since I last wrote, I have been reading more and more about the detergent approach. I see a lot of disagreement as to the approach. The original guy used 1 to 1 ratio, but other well known turners are using 6 water to 1 detergent. The length of time to immerse ranges from wiping it down a few times to a few hour soak to three days. Then there is the drying time til final turning, and that ranges from right away to a few weeks. I am going to visit my grandkid tomorrow and will do nothing on the bowl until Monday. I take it you use the original 1-1 mixture ratio. Is that true? How long would you soak it for?I will be breaking ground for the carving (hand-hewing) bowl community. I haven't seen any of them involved in this. The turners take the thickness down to very very thin. My final thickness is between a half inch and 5/8". So this will be interesting and fun. Please give me your recommendation for how long to soak and what ratio to use. Thanks,
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel;
I have only used the 1:1 ratio. As my experience is mostly with spoons it has worked well and been pretty convenient. For very large bowls I would be tempted to try lower concentrations to save on soap costs. I have found soap pretty reasonable at Sam's club or Costco though. If you compare it with glycol costs it is negligible.
My belief is that the process works primarily by osmotic pressure forcing the bound water in the wood cells to give up water and take in the soap chemicals which dry out with less shrinkage of the cell shapes resulting in less shrinkage stress to the pieces. I have had excellent results when soaking for about two weeks... I have not attempted to determine a minimum soak time. Because your bowls are a little thicker than standard turned ones I think you should allow a couple of weeks soak time. It is okay to take them out as you work on them and just put them back in before they dry much. In that manner you can combine your carving time with your soaking time. Some spoon carvers keep a bucket of spoon blanks (in water) and only carve each one for a minute or two before returning it to the water. The soap system allows for more extended carving sessions and will also prepare the wood for complete drying with far fewer shrinkage problems than would normally be encountered.
There are many approaches to drying bowls and just paper bag enclosures and long drying times has been known to be pretty effective. So many methods may be successful. In my experience though I have felt that the soapy water method had dramatic successes and offered advantages that are exceptional. I have not done real scientific testing to confirm this. I am more artist than scientist and tend to use the shortcut of relying on my instinct and minimal evidences rather than doing exhaustive testing in an organized and definitive manner.
My spoons include sections about 1/8" thick and handle parts about 1" diameter (I make pretty large spoons as a rule. I have had bad splitting on spoons even as I worked on them before I discovered the soapy water system. Now I split out blanks and soak them roughing as I get time. I usually dry them before the fine shaping and sanding. Bad splits are now extremely rare.
Clay,
Good information. Thank you. The more I learn, the more questions I have. When you finish carving your spoons, what do you do?
Do you use plastic bags or paper bags for a while?
Do you finish them with oil right after you finish carving them?I was getting the feeling that if you soak in soap solution, then after you finish turning, you no longer have to use bags, either plastic or paper. Some of the bowl carvers say that heavy coats of mineral oil, right after you finish carving, is a main key to stopping the checks and splits. They also use plastic bags for 12 hours a day for a week or two. But none of them have indicated that they know about the soap solution approach. So please let me know your drying technique after you have finished making your spoon or bowl.
Thanks,
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel;
I just rinse my spoons off and then leave them to dry in air for a few days. They dry fairly quickly and I can tell by the weight when they are fully dried (I just heft them... some guys weigh them on postal scales). Remember I do my final carving after they are dry, so this air drying step follows the rough carving.
When I am finished with the carving and sanding I will coat my spoons with walnut oil (like from a grocery... plain walnut oil) and then I let them sit on my car dash for a few days boiling in the sun. I will recoat until I have three to four coats total and they are all dry. The sun heating really speeds things up. This way I have a finished spoon about two weeks after carving is completed. Without sun the whole walnut finishing process takes around two months.
NOTE, though that the spoons are already dried thoroughly before I complete the carving which happens before the oiling begins. So I depend upon the soap treatment to control the drying process and the oiling is a finishing step only for me. Some people are using oil to slow the drying to help prevent checking but with my soap system I have not found a need for that. Under extremely dry conditions I might use paper bags to keep the drying from going too fast but I have never yet felt the need for that.
Clay,
I really appreciate the info.
I think I have it now.
I'll let you know what happens.
Thank you very much.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Hi, 9616
I've also had success using a plastic bag, and sofar haven't had mold problems by using two different methods.
1) The following method, courtesy of the Alaska State Museum, I used to dry out a 19th century Norwegian "wedding spoon" found in the mud off a Bristol Bay, Alaska cannery dock. This spoon was soaked for possibly over 100 years and needed to be dried out slowly to prevent cracking, but the method would probably also work on a newly carved project. I put the spoon in a plastic bag and placed it in a chest freezer, took it out every day or so. Each time I took it out, I turned the bag inside out and wiped off any accumulated frost/condensation. After a week or so, judged by the decreasing weight of the spoon, I felt it was ok to take it out of the freezer and dry it in the plastic bag alone. Eventually, no more moisture came off the spoon nor did it crack or mold. The freezing slows down the drying process and is also too cold to allow mold to grow.
2) Usually when I carve out of green wood I simply put it in a plastic bag, minus the freezer, but again taking the object out daily and wiping off the excess moisture and turning the bag inside out. But because my carving is often done in the winter, the objects sometimes freeze at night in my 60-year-old, poorly insulated shop, which probably helps in retarding mold.
Perhaps I haven't been too helpful about your present mold problem, but maybe the above solutions will help with future projects. Yes, to get rid of the mold I'd either wipe it down with a weak bleach solution or a vinegar solution if you were worried about changing the color of the wood with bleach. I've never used any oil until the wood seemed dry enough as I would be afraid that the oil might trap the moisture and perhaps lead to mold if the wood wasn't dry.
Baat,
Thanks for your experience. That is very helpful. I never thought about the freezer. I live in Virginia, and it has been cold here, so I could put the bag outside. I have had it in my shop in the basement. Also glad to hear that you are able to get things to dry just using the plastic bag without any mold problems. And that you got them to dry without putting mineral oil on them
What part of the world do you live in? What types of wood do you carve?
I am sure that different types of wood dry much differently, and that the climate is a factor. So far I have used red oak, sugar maple, sweet gum and sycamore for hewing bowls from green wood. I just started this adventure last Fall.
I really appreciate your feedback.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
Hi, Mel,
I live in Alaska, about 50 miles N. of Anchorage, so keeping the mold off things in the winter is no problem.
I use local, green hardwoods for carving, which is really limited: birch and alder. The birch grows larger, so I use it for bowls, masks, etc. The alder (also birch) I use for spoons, as it is pretty small, 3"-4" diam max in our area. In S.E. Alaska, it grows up to about 1' in diam., but I don't have access to that. Alder works much like birch, not much figure. Birch sometimes has figure, close to the butt, but nothing like maple or walnut can have. Occasionally I'm able to get ahold of yellow cedar. It's classed as a softwood, but it's more closely related to cyprus than to red cedar, and when dry, which is usually the only way I can get it, it's pretty darn hard, almost as hard as birch, and it takes detail nicely.
I envy your wide choices of carving wood back East, but not your heat in the summer.
Good luck on the freeze-drying method. I'm intrigued with the dish soap method described by some of the folks answering your question.
John
John,
Good to have a contact way up North. Never know when you need a friend. You and I both found out about the soap and water approach about the same time. We will both learn. Can't wait to see the results. Have fun.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
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