cracking blanks

Do you seal your blanks?

Ron Sardo in PA

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Re: Do you seal your blanks?

keith zimmerman, Normal IL

>of course I do. I use anchorseal on all surfaces. They didn't crack until I brought them indoors.

keithz

Re: cracking blanks

Jim Pugh in Ohio

>I suggest that after the anchor seal dries, place the bowl blanks into plastic bags. I use grocery type bags for individual pieces and the standard black garbage bags for a bunch of blanks. They don't have to be absolutely air tight and should help in your situation.

If you have a piece on the lathe and go away for more than a few minutes, slip a plastic grocery bag over it and tie the handles up over the chuck.

Hope this helps.

Re: Do you seal your blanks?

MikeinCape May

>Perhaps they'd do better if you only sealed the end grain and if they're rough turned,besides sealing only the end grain, place them in paper bags.

Re: Do you seal your blanks?

Brad Vietje

>Hi Mike,

In the winter with the heat running, our houses and shops are pretty dry, even up here in the Northeast. The sealer will help, but the wood still needs to be kept as cool and damp as you can practically manage. If you have a cool basement, that may help.

I try to keep green wood wet as I rough it out, then bag it and keep it in a cool and damp place if I'm planning to re-mount it later, when seasoned. I usually keep a spray bottle of water in the shop (frozen solid at the moment) so I can keep the wood damp as I turn it, too. Some wood is just going to crack, no matter what you do. I've had some twisty Cherry chunks that had minds of their own !

Safe Spinning,

Brad Vietje

Thetford, VT

Double coat of Anchorseal

John Trant (aka Boxes-n-Bowls)

>I would like to make an additional suggestion. After you coat the entire blank with anchorseal and it dries, give the end grain ends an additional coat. Don't be cheap with the Anchorseal; give it a good layer. Alternatively, if your blanks are small enough and your container is big enough, dip the ends in the Anchorseal. I have had no problems with storing green cherry and beech preped this way in my air-conditioned/heated basement workshop. Every time my Anchorseal coating is too thin (either applied or becomes weather-worn), I will get cracking.

Also, take all of the other precautions suggested by everyone else (keep it outside on your balcony, store it in bags, etc). Keep in mind that some woods are more prone to checking than others. Maple, boxelder, and poplar behave well on the log pile. Fruit woods and beech are unforgiving

Good luck,

John

Re: cracking blanks

Bob Persing

>I think Jim offers a good suggestion with the plastic bags. Recently I was turning a large (16X4) slab of Walnut. Due to limited shop time and being particularly slow at what I do, I could not finish the anticipated bowl in a single evening. During short breaks for dinner and such I would place a heavy-duty plastic bag over the bowl blank as it remained on the lathe. When quitting for the evening I would remove the bowl blank, with chuck attached, and place everything in a large plastic garbage bag. I would then scoop up a large quantity of the freshest shavings from the recent turning session and fill the bag with these "wet" shavings. This worked fine and the bowl did not crack during the entire rough turning stage.

I did manage to crack this large bowl by trying to "rush" the drying process of the rough turned bowl. Rather than be patient and keep the drying process slow I exposed the roughed blank to the dry shop air too long and got a crack from rim to almost the center....I take this to be my fault but the bowl WILL be salvaged!

A word of caution with regard to what I have stated above, storing your bowl and chuck with the shavings can cause some chucks or at least the chuck jaws to RUST!!! I now use a heavy, heavy, coat of paste wax on chuck and jaws.

Good luck with resolving the splitting problem.

BobP

Re: cracking blanks

keith zimmerman, Normal IL

>Well, everyone, thanks for all your comments. I always use two coats of anchorseal when I first cut blanks. I also put rough turned bowls in paper bags after they are sealed.

Thanks for the reminder about using the plastic bags. I used to use them all the time when I had my old shop. I just forgot about it.

I am getting a humidifier to raise the humidity level of my place. That should also help me a bit.

keithz

Re: Do you seal your blanks?

Brad Adams - Benicia California

>Twisted cherry chunks! Sounds like the name of an ice cream flavor ;-)