You want to know how to dry wet wood fast before it begins to rot: we’re here to explain that, and so much more. There are three different ways that you can dry out wood very quickly. These could be the difference between your wood being perfect for use, and rotting completely. Contents. 1 Three Ways to Dry Wood. Space Wood Out in a Ventilated Spot. Expose Every Single Side. Heat Treatment. 2 Why is Wet Wood Bad for Woodworking? Glue Doesn’t Stick. Improper Sanding. Weakens Wood. Turning it to Mush. 3 How Long Does Wet Wood Last? 4 Will Wet Wood Rot or Mold Before i. I started turning this vase shortly after receiving it in a club wood raffle. It was still wet. It seemed to be perfect for a hollow form turning. I rough turned the How Dry Wood For Turning Pdf outside and hollowed it while still green. After coating it with a PVA based wood sealer from Craft Supplies USA, I let it dry for about 18 months. I weighed it periodically to assess how much moisture had been lost. Remounting a dry but warped project is always part of the challenge. In this case I had placed a scrap disk over the entry to the inside to limit air movement. This now served as a tenon while I recut a tenon on the b. 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?  This is the commercial method for drying wood. A number of turners have created kilns which are relatively cheap to operate and build. Microwave Drying. Related Articles. Categories Hobbies and Crafts Woodworking Wood. Best right here already! Stick-Fast resin is another I've heard works how dry wood for turning 2019, and would be turrning substituted in this guide. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 59, times. Making pens and pencils on the lathe is a lot of fun and easy once you know a few of the woodworking tricks. You're sure?

Moisture meters can also detect moisture content, but the weight method is the most accurate. Method 2 of After setting the heat, place one kitchen rack on the bottom and another in the center. Now, place a large baking pan on the bottom rack and put an oven thermometer onto the center rack in one of its far corners. Monitor your oven thermometer every 10 minutes. If it's too high, lower the temperature, and if it's too low, increase it.

Always adjust the temperature by the smallest increments for optimal accuracy. Place your wood onto the center rack for 1 hour. Be sure that none of the pieces are touching. For smaller pieces, lay them perpendicular to each rung of the oven rack to prevent them from falling through. Test your wood's moisture content MC after 1 hour and reheat for 15 minutes increments as necessary.

After 1 hour has passed, remove 2 to 3 wood pieces of varying sizes from the oven. Measure their moisture content using a moisture meter. Continue heating the pieces for minute intervals until the desired MC or until the moisture levels do not decrease anymore. Method 3 of Process your logs as fast as possible. If you have just cut down a tree, make the wood into lumber as soon as you can.

Processing opens up the wood and helps the drying process, which can prevent stain and rot from affecting the wood. Store your wood in a shaded location with ample airflow. Try and find an indoor location like a hayloft or shed or an outdoor location that is in the shade.

Avoid locations like garages which likely don't have enough airflow. Never store wood in the basement or inside boxes as they dry, they definitely won't have enough airflow. For example, if you plan to use the wood to make a chair that will be placed in a dry area of your home, store it in an area with similarly low moisture content Point an electric household fan toward your wood between your cutting sessions to improve airflow.

This circulation will help your wood dry in at least half the time that it normally would. Seal off the ends of each piece of lumber immediately after cutting to prevent moisture decay. Exposed ends can lead to drying that is too fast, which paves the way for end-grain cracking and splits. And since moisture escapes wood 10 to 12 times quicker from the ends, leaving them exposed is damaging to the wood.

Apply paraffin wax, shellac, polyurethane, or latex paint to the ends in a uniform manner so that both are completely covered.

Try to do so as soon as possible—within minutes—for the best results. Stack your lumber uniformly to expose all sides to airflow. When you're cutting your lumber, cut the pieces to the same lengths and thicknesses. Afterward, these equal dimensions will make it easier to stack them in a manner that exposes each side to air. Cover the top of your wood with a tarp or plastic sheeting.

Don't cover the entire pile of wood to the ground—this will hold in moisture. By just covering the top, you can ensure that each piece is adequately shaded without trapping moisture.

Measure the moisture content MC of your wood with a moisture meter. If you're using a pin-type moisture meter, press the 2 tips of the device into your wood. Afterward, turn it on and examine the moisture reading. For pinless meters, press the base of the scanning plane to the wood and activate it.

Moisture readings are a percentage between 0 and Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.

When microwaving multiple pieces of wood, don't heat multiple pieces of varying moisture contents. Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0. Don't rush—more cycles at lower heat is easier on the wood than fewer cycles at high heat. Submit a Tip All tip submissions are carefully reviewed before being published. Don't use high-heat microwave settings or you risk starting a fire. Helpful 1 Not Helpful 1. Related wikiHows How to.

How to. More References 6. About This Article. Co-authored by:. Co-authors: Updated: June 16, Categories: Featured Articles Wood. Article Summary X With a few tricks, you can easily dry your wood faster at home.

Deutsch: Holz schnell trocknen. Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 59, times. Did this article help you? Cookies make wikiHow better. Yes, this one is painfully obvious, i know, but if i didn't list it I'm sure someone would forget. Now, stabilizing works well on a lot of woods, but there are some things to watch out for; this doesn't work with wood that have a high natural oil content most exotics like rosewood and cocobolo, or oily domestics like teak , and extremely dense woods don't seem to let the resin penetrate well enough.

Anything harder or denser than hard maple i wouldn't recommend trying. Stabilizing resin. There's a few to choose from here. I'm using Cactus Juice , a pre-catalyzed heat-activated acrylic resin. This is my favorite, and I highly recommend it, it works well and TurnTex Woodworks is fantastic to work with.

Stick-Fast resin is another I've heard works well, and would be easily substituted in this guide. Id stay away from the more improvised solutions that are recommended online, like Minwax Wood Hardener, or the oft-recommended plexiglass dissolved in acetone.

Neither are meant for this process, both are highly flammable and both will not can, will destroy your vacuum pump. Whatever you go with, you'll need enough to completely fill your vacuum chamber, plus a little more.

That's all for the software materials , onto the hardware. Now, i usually try to stay away from recommending specialized equipment, but for this, its necessary:. Toaster Oven. You'll need this to dry the wood before stabilizing, as well as curing the resin after infusing it into the wood.

Nothing in this is particularly toxic, so your kitchen oven would work as well, but toaster ovens are cheap and generally have better heat control. Vacuum Pump. This is completely necessary. Get the best you can, two-stage if you can swing it, you How Dry Wood For Turning Work 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 How Dry Wood For Turning Down 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 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.

How long should you wait? Here again it depends, the rule of thumb is let the blanks soak for twice as long as the vacuum was running, i. Personally, i like tripling that amount of time, 2 hours vacuuming, 6 hours soak , and i always soak for at least 12 hours. Too much time cant hurt, but too little can. You also want to make sure that no part of the blanks are exposed to air, everything should be covered in the resin.

The 2 chamber design should ensure that, but it never hurts to keep an eye out. If any part of the blanks is exposed to air, start the vacuum process over. Assuming youve let your blanks soak long enough, theyre now completely saturated with an acrylic resin, but that resin still needs to cure. To do this, you need to expose it to heat, f in this case. Here again we use the toaster oven. You can either wrap your blanks in foil and bake them, or do as i am and place them all on a wire rack.

Wrapping the blanks cuts down on the smoke generated but tends to leave excess resin dried on the surface, the wire rack will let the excess run off but can put off a bit of smoke. Both work equally well. The key things here are time and temperature, the core of your blank HAS to reach f.

Set your oven for f, pop everything in and wait a few hours. Too much time wont hurt anything, but take the blanks out too soon and theyre ruined. Thicker pieces will take longer, and again, you cant rush this.

Leave them cooking overnight if you can manage, you wont hurt them as long as the temperature stays at about f. At this point, congrats, your wood is officially stabilized and subject to all the benefits that process entails! Clean off the excess resin and see what youve got! Please, did you really think id leave it like that? One of the biggest benefits to stabilized wood is that it looks like wood, it feels like wood, but the finished product is a wonderful hybrid.

I knocked together a knife using some of the Sassafras i stabilized. Before stabilization, this was a wood i would've never used on a knife handle, it was far too soft, subject to far too much movement, hard to work with on account of the splintery grain, really just completely unsuitable for this application.

Lumber Products Portland Oregon Market Countersink Drill Bit Near Me Wood Planer Gear