Are you sure? Very instructive instructable, will be put to good use in the next weeks! At first glance the price seems high, but you get extremely solid soaking dry wood for turning knife quality with an excellent company backing the work 4. Paduk Can't be stabilized cause it's too oily and dense. If you remove them too quickly, the pieces will crack. Alcohol knufe DNA This method uses the alcohol to replace water in the wood.

Get the best you can, two-stage if you can swing it, you need to pull as deep a vacuum as humanly possible. An electric rotary vane pump like this will work well. You can find used HVAC service pumps on ebay as well, if you want a better price. A venturi pump hooked to an air compressor will technically work, but the length of time youll need to run it can strain your compressor.

Dont even try those hand pumped brake bleeder things, they wont work for this, and you do not want to know how i know that. Vacuum Chamber. You can build or buy these. I chose to build mine, and ill give you a quick run down in the next step.

If you decide youd rather buy yours, here again TurnTex Woodworks is an excellent resource. At first glance the price seems high, but you get extremely solid build quality with an excellent company backing the work.

Alright, this is a quick and dirty rundown of how i built my chamber. Its really simple and completely thrown together, but has been serving me well for quite some time.

My setup is a 2 part design, a chamber where the wood to be stabilized will chill in the resin, and a secondary overflow chamber that mitigates the risk of my vacuum pump sucking up resin read: bad thing happens. So, first, a shopping list:. Mason jars are actually meant to stand up to vacuum pressures, that's what the process of canning entails.

Mine has been through hundreds of cycles and hasn't grenaded. So, first up, put a few holes in the lids of the mason jars, 2 holes in one and 1 in the other.

After that, assemble everything as indicated by the pictures. Really, they explain a lot more than anything i can type. The 2 chamber design will prevent the resin from getting to the pump if it foams up, more on that later. You can get away with just the stabilizing chamber, but i don't recommend it. Use as much hose as you can between the vacuum pump and the valve setup, this mitigates risk to the pump if something should go wrong.

The valve setup is important, it will allow you to keep a vacuum in the chamber setup while shutting off the pump, as well as reintroduce air to the system.

It also allows for control of how fast the chamber is de- and re-pressurized. Do everything you can to make the system air-tight. Caulk all joints, thread tape all pipe connections, use hose clamps to attach the hose to the barb fittings. It shouldnt take much work to get your setup looking like mine, its just screwing things together.

The only challenging part is attaching the hose to the vacuum pump, but since there are so many different pumps and ways to attach the hose its pointless for me to try to list them all here. I replaced the flared fitting in mine with a barbed fitting and attached the hose to that, you may have to do different.

Once your chamber setup is all built, lets move on to the fun stuff! Alrighty, now its time to get down to business and get the wood prepped to go in the vacuum chamber.

The first thing you want to do is take your pieces of wood close to whatever the finished size you need. After all, you dont want to waste the time and materials stabilizing a 3"x4"x5" block of wood if you're going to cut it down to a 1" cube after the fact. Im stabilizing this batch for use as knife scales, so i machine my bricks and blocks down to roughly 1. That's just what works for me. Remember, you want to make yours as small as possible, but leave a little extra in case anything warps during drying.

Speaking of drying, lets talk about that! The dryer the wood is, the more the resin will penetrate and the better the final results will be. If the wood is too wet, the stabilization process will fail , so take this part seriously. Also note, when i say moisture, its not anything that will even feel wet, what I'm talking about here is water that's actually trapped in the cells of the wood that we need to get rid of. Now, the drying process it pretty simple, stick the wood in your toaster oven at f and leave it there for as long as possible.

In my case, i left my scales cooking for about 8 hours. Yeah, maybe, but better than underkill. Thicker pieces will require longer drying times, so the thicker the piece, the longer you want to leave it in there.

I recommend a minimum of 2 hours, but again, as long as possible. Once you thing the pieces are dry enough, toss em in a zip-top freezer bag and let them cool to room temperature. Quick tip, if you see and condensation on the inside of the bag, the blanks aren't dry enough, pop em back in the heat until the bag stays clear. Make sure your blanks are in a sealed container to cool, if you just leave them on the counter the blanks will actually absorb moisture from the air, defeating the purpose of drying them.

Now, the wood im using is already pretty dry to start with, so i cut my pieces pretty close to what i wanted the final dimension to be. If your pieces aren't quite so dry, they could warp as they dry in the oven, so for the first few batches you do i recommend leaving them fairly oversized.

Wood nice and cool? Are you sure? Remember, the resin were using is heat-activated, so if the wood is still hot when you put it in, the resin will activate on the surface and prevent any more absorption, so make sure its cool. You're sure? Wait a little long to be sure, then come back. Okay, now that the wood is sufficiently cool and dry, time to actually make with the stabilization! Here again the pictures explain a lot, so check those for more details.

First things first, take the lids off both the jars, make sure they're clean and empty. Now, place the wood blanks in one of the jars. This will be the stabilization chamber, it gets the lid with 1 hose. Once the wood blanks are in the jar, find some way to prevent them from floating. Ive found that a round cut of chicken wire does a pretty good job, just bend it so that it forces the wood down against the bottom of the jar.

Place the lid on it and set aside. This will be the reservoir, and Soaking Dry Wood For Turning Zero it serves 2 purposes. For one, the air space at the top of the jar will keep the pump from sucking up liquid.

The second purpose it serves is to keep the stabilizing chamber filled with resin, more on that in a minute. Make sure the lies are hooked up correctly, and the pickup hose in the reservoir reaches to the bottom of the jar. Once you have that done, time to put the spurs to it. Adjust the valves to that the valve going to open air is completely closed, and the valve going to the chambers is all the way open, then turn on your vacuum pump.

Now, just let it run until you stop seeing air bubbles come up through the resin. Keep an eye on the hose between the valves and the chambers, make sure no resin is getting sucked up.

If it is, quickly open the valve going to open air to release the vacuum, don't let the pump suck up the resin. The massive foaming subsides pretty quick, after that its pretty much set and forget.

Again, just let the pump run until there aren't any bubbles, this could take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the thickness of the blank. Don't rush this, it takes time. Once the bubbles stop, its time to shut off the pump.

Don't just flip the switch though, you'll kill your pump. Instead, close the valve leading to the chambers, then open the valve leading to open air. Once the pump is pulling air, shut it off. Now, slowly open the valve leading to the chamber. You'll hear a big "whooosssshhhh" as air rushes back into the system, and the increase in pressure will force the resin in the reservoir into the stabilizing chamber, fully filling it up.

Neat, huh? That pressure is actually the magic to this process, now atmospheric pressure will force the resin into all the tiny little nooks and cranny in the wood that water and air used to occupy, all you have to do is wait.

The soap seems to further reduce checking to the point where it is practically nonexistent in clear wood. The second option is to allow the rough turned blank to air dry before re-turning.

We have always recommend wrapping in newspaper to slow moisture loss, or waxing, to reduce end grain checking. The traditional drying time after rough turning is three months. Drying time has been reduced from three months to several weeks. We can only conclude that the detergent is accelerating the water transfer across the cell membranes. There have been many claims, both in the AAW Journal article and on the Internet, of a reduction in warping during drying.

From the beginning I have felt that this seems to fly in the face of wood technology. The claims were all from people doing spindle turned bowls the grain runs between the centers of the lathe.

Because of the grain orientation there is very little discernible warping in spindle turned bowls anyway. Conventionally bowls are faceplate turned the grain runs across the centers of the lathe. We integrated the process into out turning classes here at Conover Workshops and tried the process on American beech, maple and cherry.

While the latter two woods have a favorable radial to tangential shrinkage ratios, beech has one of the worst in North America, so we had a good test control subject. We have now tried the process on enough faceplate turned bowls to say that there is no change in the ultimate warping of the wood. What is gained by the process, however, is quicker drying with less checking and far less tear out in end grain by the tools.

On dry wood, sanding is marvelous with no clogging and faster sanding through the grades. There is some debate on the Internet as to changes in color of the wood by the process.

So far we have found no change in color or how the wood accepts its final finish. All in all, the entire staff at Conover Workshops have found value in the process and have now integrated it into our turning curriculum. I urge you to try it yourself—and if you learn anything new please share it with all of us.

Likewise, Ron Kent would be pleased to receive your thoughts. Both Ron and I hope that people will rave over their soapy bowls.

Quick View. Add to Cart. Sorby - Thin Kerf Parting Tool. I personally prefer functional pieces to be what I turn, not how the wood wants to move. So I need to be able to dry wood for these pieces. I will try to describe my understanding and experiences with these processes in this white paper. I have NOT done controlled experiments or collected data across a wide variety of wood types.

Please do NOT take this as gospel, but just documentation of my current thoughts and the processes that I use. If you want more info, a quick search on the web will point you to the latest info on any of these methods.

In the end, use the technique that you are the most comfortable with. Start by rough turning your vessel. I have had problems with cracks regardless of what process I use when the vessel is too thick. Occasionally I do have problems where the vessel is cannot be turned again, due to the wood moving enough that the wall thickness is not enough.

Now it is time to dry the turnings so that they will be stabilized and ready for final turning. I use 3 different processes, boiling, bagging, and sealing. Why not just 1? If you could see me right now, you would see me shrug my shoulders.

Boiling longer will not harm things. You must be careful to not have the turning jam in the pot and act like a steam pot lid. If it does, it could explode. This would not be good. Do NOT do the boiling in the kitchen with a pot that you would like to continue using for something other than boiling wood.

The pot will not be usable for anything other than boiling wood. John Brugo use to boil our turnings in an old water heater tank outside. So you need a good heat source and a large pot. Turkey boilers, crab pot cookers, etc make great sources for heat.

The vessels need to be completely under water, or at least such that they would be covered if the vessels touched the bottom. If you boil for Soaking Dry Wood For Turning 5th an extended period of time, you may need to add water. You would not want to have any more water than required to minimize costs. Once done boiling, allow the vessels to cool in the tank overnight. Do not remove from the water till the water has reached the air temperature. If you remove them too quickly, the pieces will crack. Sad to waste this much time to have this happen.

Set the vessels out and allow them to dry. There will be some surface dis-colorization, but it does not go very deep, and turns off when you do the final turning. In summary, the cons are that this is relatively expensive to get set up and a fair amount of work for one or two vessels. This process is something that takes constant supervision.

After rough turning, I will place the vessel in a brown paper bag. If the humidity is low, I will use two or three bags for the first couple of weeks, and then reduce to 2 bags for a week, and then finally 1 bag.

If the wood is very wet, you will need to change the bags every day till the bags are not wet the next day. I keep these bagged vessels on the floor of the shop, with no air flow.

After a couple of months, I will move the vessels onto a rack to allow them to finish drying. These vessels can take 6 months to 2 years to dry, depending upon the type of wood.

Walnut usually dries in 3 to 4 months. Maple has been closer to 6 months. Do not use plastic bags. This does limit the drying, but it does create an environment that is likely to cause the wood to rot. Rather than just leaving them out of bag completely, this is a way to continue to control the drying not accelerating, but slowing. The cons of this process are that it takes lots of attention, and does not dry things quickly. If you accelerate the drying time, you will increase the probability of cracks.

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