Kiln dry bowls

No but,.....

Dominic Greco in Richboro PA

>Larry,

There was a post about this topic approximately 2 months ago. But I never read the outcome. Sorry, no help there.

BUT, you might want to check out Russ' article on making A bowl kiln out of an old dishwasher. I believe that Bill Grumbine made one from an old fridge.

The key is providing space around the bowls for air movement (having them on wire racks), a heat source (a 60 watt light bulb), and a fan to move the air. If you're handy enough, you wire a thermostat into the lightbulb to try to keep a constant temperature. That's a pretty simplistic explanation of the overall theory. You might want to consult with people who've actually built one of these.

See ya around,

Dominic

Re: Kiln dry bowls (long reply)

Gary Evans

>Hi Larry,

I don't think it would be a good idea to try to dry roughed out bowls in a conventional kiln. Kiln schedules are designed to suck the moisture as rapidly as possible from nice, straight grained, relatively thin boards.

I think it would be way too harsh an environment for bowls, which contain side and end grain both.

Better to make a crude kiln like Dom referred to. All you really need is a plywood box without a bottom and a removeable top. It really doesn't take a lot of heat and air movement to drop the relative humidity enough to hasten drying. Just remember that the more you drop the RH, the faster the rate of drying.

Drying wood succesfully is a balancing act between the increasing strength of the wood fibers as they dry and the increasing stresses that are building within the wood. You gain very little strength until the cell walls start to lose their bound water, usually around the 30% MC range. After that, you can usually increase the drying rate without chancing undue degrade.

I tend to be a proponent of letting roughed out bowls dry in a slow, natural manner. If you'll remember a few weeks ago, both Barbara G. and Wally posted about their success in drying their roughed out work, even though they start with very different drying conditions. The common factor was the fact that they let their pieces sit for a number of months to dry.

I believe that life is too short to get in too big a hurry. 8^]

Hope this helps,

GE