Is it firewood?

Re: Is it firewood?

Mike Schwing from Maryland

>I'd say your odds are good and continue with it. If you used thin CA first it will have seeped into the wood and made a good bonding surface for any gap filling needed with thicker CA.

Regardless, you should be able to wrap the exterior with packing tape or something similar (stretch wrap plastic?) to keep it together while you're hollowing it. When you're done, consider refilling the crack with something decorative. Dominic seems to be the man around here on that one. Maybe he'll chime in.

Re: Is it firewood?

Richard Allen

>Hi Matt

If you want to become practiced at "saveing" a bowl then this sound like as good a piece as any to start with.

Personaly, there is way to much good wood around to practice the "art" of "saveing" a cracked bowl.

BTW those cracks can open and close as the wood continues to dry. If you use CA on a green crack it might put other stres on the wood which could yeild another crack as the wood drys.

Good Luck

Richard

Re: Is it firewood?

Bill Grumbine, Kutztown PA

>Matt, the answer to your question is, it depends. It depends on a lot of things. How much wood do you have? How much time do you have? How much patience do you have? Is this wood special for some reason? The list goes on.

If it were me I would have hollowed it out and then waited to see what happened. By way of example, I have a large cherry blank up in the shop that is just about ready to finish. It should come out at about 17" in diameter and over 7" deep if I recall. It turned very nicely, and then developed a huge crack (> 1/16") while drying. I let it go, and as it continued to dry, the crack closed up so tightly that I can barely see it, and that is mainly because I know where to look. I will finish it and then let it sit to see if the crack reappears, but previous experience says it won't.

If you have lots of other wood, I would not waste time on it. I know, this is in direct contradiction to what I wrote above, but I mean, don't spend a lot of time with fillers, etc. There is no use putting $10.00 worth of inlace into a $2.00 bowl blank. Oak of just about any variety is not the most spectacular turning stock, although I will offer a caveat that the oaks classified in the white category (as opposed to red) are more interesting. I do not know where live oak is listed.

Good luck with it.

Bill

Re: Is it firewood?

Matthew George

>Thanks for all the advice. There's some nice technique hidden in this thread.

I went ahead and finished hollowing it last night, and am glad I did. In general, I'd agree with all the advice of "don't waste your time with bad wood", but I was hoping to give the bowl to my sister this weekend as a belated birthday gift; and so I had just a few days to get something together.

The Live Oak blank I used has some quite interesting grain figure -- not the bland plain grain you see in most red oaks, nor any of the ray-flecking you see in white oaks. Rather, a nice mottleing of light and dark areas. I'll try to snap a picture when it's all done.

This was the first blank I tried to take down to a finished wall thickness, but because of the cracking; this was not all that thin -- maybe 3/8".

I sanded the surfaces inside and out to 400 grit, and the wood has a nice tight grain (also unlike red oak) and looks quite burnished and shiny even without any finish.

Several more little cracks appeared, but it's held together. I just need to turn off the tenon where the chuck grips it, and that should do it.

-Matt