Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Apple logs
MarkP4583
>Im about to pick up a truck load of Apple wood that was cut about 2-3 weeks ago.
From some of the previous posts that I have read, this wood splits very easy when turned green?
If so should I wait until it is dry before turning, rough out or cut into blanks and let it dry first?
How would you approch this?
Thanks
Re: Apple logs
Mike Schwing from Maryland
>I have been turing a lot of apple. It moves amazingly when drying. I've taken two approaches - first is to rough it out and seal the entire blank in anchorseal. I have blanks that've been drying in this fashion for 4 months now and they've warped amazingly, but not a single crack. I left the walls about 10% of the bowl's diameter in thickness before waxing. No cracks at all but some of them just barely resemble the shapes they were roughed as.
The other method has been for end grain turning in vase fashion - I just started this but the experiments (see earlier post from Fri or Sat) have been very positive - slow drying in double paper bags after turning and finishing at about 3/8" thickness all around. No cracks, little warping.
Re: Apple logs
Dale Stansbery
>If you don't rough turn the bowls, you'll at least want to split the logs along the pith and anchor seal them. I just looked at an apple bowl blank today that I cut a year ago and missed the pith about 1/2" leaving it in the blank. It split the 1/2" from the pith out to to the flat side, but the opposite side from the pith toward the bark looks fine and check free.