Speedy Dry/ Kitty Litter,Drying Wood?

Re: Speedy Dry/ Kitty Litter,Drying Wood?

Barry Irby

>I tried the closet dehumidifier stuff. Can't think what it is. Some whitish granules in a perforated container you are supposed to place in your damp closet to dry your shoes or whatever to prevent mold. Bought it at Lowes. I put it and a piece of wood in a large plastic air tight container and left it a while. It seemed to work, but for some reason I got distracted and never did the work. I should have weighed the wood and the desiccant to see if one was taking the moisture from the other and how much it would actually dry the wood. Another of those things that just never happened.

PS, It struck me that.....

Barry Irby

>this would be expensive unless you could bake or somehow dry the moisture out of the desiccant and reuse it.

I thought of just covering the wood in the stuff and sealing it up, but it turns into soup as it gets wet and I assumed it would stick to the wood and perhaps stain it.

I suppose you could bury a piece in the cat's litter box, but then the cat might.....

Re: PS, It struck me that.....

Mike Schwing from Md.

>Hey that would be a great way to fume oak.

Re: Speedy Dry/ Kitty Litter,Drying Wood?

Darryl Hansen

>I have used silica gel. It is used to dry flowers and you can get in in bulk. Usually there are some blue gel crystals in the mix that turn red when soaked. Put it in an oven and they turn blue again and can be reused. Does work well and I have used it in conjunction with alcohol. Darryl

Re: Speedy Dry/ Kitty Litter,Drying Wood?

Jim King-Iquitos-Peru

>Dried sawdust and shavings will work well if you cover the blanks with it.

Calling all cats ! -

Fred in NC

>Good ideas and worthy of trying, Eagle. The dessicant will probably be faster because it will soak moisture in a hurry. Might have to seal the ends to prevent cracking.

For kitty litter, I would read the label and find out what the ingredients are. If it does not have a lot of chemicals, it might be reusable by drying in the oven or outside in the sun.

Re: Speedy Dry/ Kitty Litter,Drying Wood?

Pete in Holland, MI

>The major portion of most kitty liters is simply dry clay.

Re: Speedy Dry/ Kitty Litter,Drying Wood?

John Lucas

>I got a tip one day on using rice to dry wood blanks. If I remember correctly he would spread the rice out to dry after drying the wood then it would be ready for another bowl drying spell.

Re: Speedy Dry/ Kitty Litter,Drying Wood?

EagleS.C.

>The major portion of most kitty liters is simply dry clay.

That's why I thought of the speedy dry.

I haven't seen it mentioned I wondered why not.

The rice idea seems promising.,

Just wonderng if the the rice would ferment if it soaked up enough"moisture"

I looked into it.

Dave Smith, Longview, WA

>I had the same idea when I first started turning. I didn't see how kitty litter would be any better than air. Actually air circulates and moves the moisture away from the surface of the wood. There are some real health concerns with silica gel which I haven't researched. While a drying medium does absorb moisture it doesn't necessarily dry wood any faster or ameliorate any problems with distortion or cracking. I have read some post saying that desiccants have been tried for drying wood and not prove to be effective. I don't have time to search the archives but I am pretty sure that Russ weighed in on this within the last year along with a couple other people.

Without having done in depth research I only have an opinion on desiccant drying. However my limited testing did not warrant further investigation on my part.

Dave Smith

Weatherman was wrong, no rain today in Longview, WA.

Re: I looked into it.

Ken from SW WI

>I seem to remember reading somewhere (Mother Earth News, maybe?) in relation to brewing your own ethanol for fuel, that silica gel is used to remove the last percentage of moisture from it. Maybe a good way to restore your DNA?

Just a thought...

Drying alcohol

Mike Brazeau

>Since ethanol is so rediculously priced in Canada, I actually looked into distilling ethanol recently on the net. I majored in Chemistry eons ago and actually remember having "neat" ethanol for partying. Boy am I dating myself. In the industrial process for grain or corn produced ethanol, molecular sieve is used to dry the water out of the alcohol if anhydrous ethanol is required. The best you can achieve with a high effiiciency distillation and re-distillation is 95%. Molecular sieves are a form of alumino silicates that have pore sizes to trap various gaseous and liquid compounds. Used to use to separate gases in gas chromatography. Oxygen enhancers that old smokers drag around function with mole sieve. One column traps nitrogen and gives enriched air while the other is purged and heated to drive out the nitrogen. Anyway, in the end I thought it a bit more complicated than moonshine and I don't need the revenuers coming down my street. Maybe with them being so busy busting pot houses around Ontario, ethanol would go unnoticed? You could buy mole sieve from a lab supply house, dry your alcohol and then heat the mole sieve in an oven and drive off the water along with any ethanol retained. I would expect it to be pretty expensive. Silica gel as mentioned earlier, might do the same thing, as would any anhydrous chemical that absorbs water and doesn't mind being involved with the alcohol. Try adding some plaster of paris and see what happens. It absorbs 2 waters of hydration for every mole of dry CaSO4. Nothing to lose. If it worked, 5 pounds of plaster of paris would remove about one pound of water. Enough chemistry, good night.

Mike

Just checked out molecular sieve cost

Mike Brazeau

>Found the price of molecular sieve. It was $90 cdn for 1 kg. Hardly worth it.

Mike