pine

Re: pine

John C Lucas

I find sealing the end grain is always a safe bet. Not 100% but always better than none.

Re: pine

John K Jordan

>>>neighbor just cut down a large pine tree.... 2 - 2 1/2 feet across...

i've been wanting some for a while so i can do some sandblasting, but i figured id let it dry out a bit....

it's oozing so much sap that im still sticky after several hand washings and soap...

how should i seal it?

Do you plan on cutting it into big chunks to turn a bowl or something? While individual trees might vary a lot, comments on others who have tried that are disappointing, I've read things like "a huge sappy mess everywhere" and "never again." One experienced bowl turner just states don't turn green pine.

Note: I have no personal experience in turning pine that hasn't been kiln dried. However, I have sawn pine on my sawmill.

The wood industry "sets" sap/pitch by heating in a kiln. I believe the temperature needed is 160F but I think some recommend higher. I have no idea how long it would take to get a log section or large chainsawed bowl blank up to 160 and hold it there for long enough to turn the sap from sticky gooey to hard resin.

I've read where people have used a heat gun to set the sap on the outside surface of wood but it seems that would only heat a few millimeters into the wood before charring the outside.

When you mention sealing the wood, do you mean sealing the sap on unturned chunk or the turned piece, or sealing the ends of the log to prevent cracking? For the latter, wax such as AnchorSeal will work. For sealing the sap in I wonder if anything will work. Wood expert Gene Wengert states: The sap will eventually ooze through shellac and paint

I think the sap will eventually dry on the surface, don't know about deep in the wood. I cut some boards from white pine on my sawmill and stickered and air-dried. They were still a little sticky but I think those I put in my barn loft are ok now (maybe 8-10 years since I put them there). I have no idea if the sap inside is still sticky.

Googling "setting sap AND pitch in pine" will give lots of reading material.

JKJ

Never Again

Doc Green

Many years ago I tried turning a rather small chunk of pine firewood that had been down and stacked for about three years. I thought it was dry . . .

The inside was still sticky, and it made a big mess. The rosin covered everything - lathe, turning tools, bandsaw blade, etc., and it was impossible to sand. The stuff was so horrible to work that I abandoned it midstream, so to speak. For my efforts, I now have two 5" diameter bowls with a wall thickness of about 1.5".

On the other hand, I have turned quite a bit of kiln-dried dimensional lumber to make parts for various projects. In that, the sap is not a problem.

Life is too short to turn . . . pine!

~Doc

Re: Never Again

mikeee12345

Turning green pine is a real mess, you will need a solvent to clean the pine resin

that will cover everything in the line of fire in and around the lathe. However pine

is a very stable wood once it has been dried and machined.

Even old growth pine is impossible to sand

Dick Coers

I got a thick piece of old growth pine that had been a window sill in a commercial building for over 100 years. Even it was impossible to sand. I had to wet sand the little box with mineral spirits to get the abrasive to last over 30 seconds without gumming up.

Use abranet to sand. It doesnt clog

Re: Use abranet to sand. It doesnt clog

John K Jordan

Also, one woodworker successfully sanded and repeatedly cleaned the sandpaper with turpentine, the natural solvent for pine pitch.

JKJ

Re: pine

George Balock

Ive never turned pine, but it’s relative, spruce is equally difficult with resin getting everywhere. I was trying to turn a Christmas ornament out of an old piece of Christmas tree.

It clogged on this stuff.

Dick Coers

I can't describe what it was like to sand. Touch the wood and the layer smeared across the abrasive. If I didn't have mineral spirits dripping off the abrasive, it formed a solid layer. The abranet made it easier to dislodge the film, but the film still formed. This stuff didn't have any paint on it, had been exposed to the weather for over 100 years, and only had about film of gray weathering on it.

Re: pine

Jorge

Green pine on the lathe is guarateed frustration.

But carving green pine can be lots of fun!

Re: pine

darrin hill

The plan is to make a cube and then turn each side to make a star... not sure what its called...friend made one out of cocobolo....

i want to make it and then sand blast it.. hence the pine.... want soft parts to make a skeleton...

wondering if its worth the effort...

Re: pine

darrin hill

what im unsure of, is if it's exuding sap like crazy, can u seal it with wax, paint, or anchor seal or whatever?

does the sap harden quickly? it's been several days...

Re: Even old growth pine is impossible to sand

Mike Stafford

I just finished a box turned from heart pine that came from a warehouse that was built in the 1840's. It smelled as if it was cut yesterday.

It was very hard, very dry and I was able to cut it quite cleanly except on the bottom of the inside of the box. I had tear out there that I had to deal with. Managed to get most of it out with a sharp scraper.

Then I sanded with (heaven forbid) a 60 grit disc to remove the remainder. I found out a long time ago that it is best to start with a really coarse disc and work your way up from there when dealing with tear out. I power sanded the rest of the inside and cleaned the discs frequently with a gum eraser stick. I did wipe out the interior frequently with turpentine as John suggested to remove the stickiness. I had more trouble with the paper I was using for hand sanding as it did gum up but I just threw it away and got another piece.

You should use sandpaper like John Lucas is paying for it.

Re: pine

Dick Coers

Sure you can seal it. Sap does not harden quickly, that's why folks are telling you how kilns set the sap with heat. Native peoples used sap to seal canoes and such. It a flexible goo for a long time.

I can also attest to how tough it is to get sap out of a beard. EVERYTHING gets sticky when the chips start to fly!

Re: pine

david

Darrin: You did not say what kind of pine tree your neighbor is cutting down. I have about 15 years of experience turning pine, but only the Norfolk Island and Cook varieties, so the following comments may not apply to all. These have branches on the same relative level and make for interesting dark spots if on the side or a star pattern if turned so the branches are on the bottom. The wood is very stable and I do nothing to seal it primarily because they are readily available and it is rare for cracks to appear on end cuts. There can be ample sap oozing for several days after being cut, but the sap comes only from the cambium layer. Once the bark is removed, sap is no longer an issue. We usually turn NIP and Cook pine endgrain to take advantage of the knots which usually appear as rounds or ovals on side walls of vessels. I remove the bark by cutting through one or more sides of a blank disc and wedging a chisel at the cambium layer to separate the bark from the sapwood. The bark can come off in a single piece and can be 1/4" to 3/4" thick. If you start turning the piece with the bark still intact on a relatively fresh cut piece, you run the risk of sap flying all over the place. As mentioned, turpentine or paint thinner is a good solvent to remove sap from the walls, ceiling, lathe bed, front of your clothing and/or beard. Sanding when wet will surely clog any sandpaper, but you can turn to final thickness where the wood will be dry enough to sand effectively. Being a softwood, sanding is easy on relatively dry wood.

Fat pine?

John K Jordan

>>>I just finished a box turned from heart pine that came from a warehouse that was built in the 1840's. It smelled as if it was cut yesterday.

Did you ever turn "fat" pine (sometimes called "lighter" pine, used to burn, fire starters, torches and things)? Ralph Watts once gave me a huge piece of fat pine that I want to try turning. I wonder if it's the same as heart pine. Now I want to go out and cut off a piece. Maybe I should first give it the barn loft summer heat treatment I gave the pine boards.

>>>You should use sandpaper like John Lucas is paying for it.

I have no trouble with using sandpaper like that. The trouble I have is getting John to actually buy it for me. Maybe he'll read this and feel bad and buy a round of sandpaper for all of us!

BTW, I've shown your little ort bowl to a lot more people since I took it off the shelf in the house and put it in the cabinet in the shop. It and the box now have a place of honor along with with things by Lucas, Ed Davidson, Frank Penta, and others.

JKJ

Re: pine

David Smith

I suppose I may be the odd man out as I don't mind turning green pine. We have ponderosa pine around here and I don't find it to be as sappy as blue spruce. I recently had to cut down a tree in my front yard and decided to turn a bowl from it, rather than having to deal with a bunch of sap I instead had water gushing down the flute of my bowl gouge. Most of the sap I see is towards the outer part of the round, closer to the bark. I suppose its fair to say I deal with more sap that is oozing on the outside of the log than I am with any on the inside. Here is a photo of the bowl I started from one of the rounds I cut from my tree. Unfortunately I've been in bed with pneumonia for the past week and can't get out to finish this. This is probably the most blue I've seen in any pine around here.

Re: pine

Pete Kekel

I don't know if you need to use pine to achieve the skeleton look. Others have used Oak for this. I think Ash might work as well. Might be possible to use something else and avoid all the sticky stuff.

Re: pine

John K Jordan

>>>Unfortunately I've been in bed with pneumonia for the past week and can't get out to finish this. This is probably the most blue I've seen in any pine around here.

Oh no, I pray you are well very soon. I've hand pneumonia more than once (actually way too many times) and it wipes me out for at least a week. Mine always started with sinus, then moved to bronchitis, then sometimes went to pneumonia. Definitely not my idea of how to have fun.

Re: Fat pine?

Mike Stafford

It is my understanding that heart pine, fat wood (pine) and lighter wood (pine) are basically the same thing and is derived from the center of the pine tree. However the availability of heart pine is not what it used to be as the source is long leaf pine which was over harvested and is virtually non-existent today. Long leaf pines can be over 100 feet tall. Before commercialization long leaf pines were extant throughout the southeast from Texas to Virginia. The over harvesting was done by folks during colonial days who used it for everything from framing material to window sashes because the high resin content made it almost impervious to rot and insects.

Not only were the long leaf pines used for timber but they were essential to ship building where the resins from the trees were also used to make tar, pitch and turpentine. Many, many trees were cut down and burned in kilns just to extract the concentrated pine resins which were then boiled and refined. Agriculture was also very unfriendly to the long leaf pines as "free range"/feral hogs ate the pine cones from these trees and also uprooted the saplings. The result was that millions of acres of long leaf pine trees were decimated. Just imagine how much worse it would have been if these old timers had chain saws.

The primary source of heart pine these days is reclaimed timbers from old barns and buildings. There is a company less than 20 miles from me that does just that and that is where I was able to get a stick of heart pine said to be from a warehouse built in the 1840's. They process this stuff into flooring.

The timbers from this warehouse were incredible to see. Some of the columns were 16" square and over 40 feet long and others were 12" square. The ceiling joists were 6x16. The floor joists were 4x10. There were also some 12x16 timbers supporting joists. Some of these joists were more than 60 feet long. The flooring boards were 3" thick where they passed over the joists. The actual thickness varied and the flooring was leveled by hewing the underside of the boards with adzes to get the floor even.

These timbers were dirty black and stained pieces of wood until they were sawed or planed. Then they smelled as good as any fresh pine. My shop smells like a local saw mill that processes knotty pine.

Re: pine

David Smith

I agree, it hasn't been any fun.

Re: pine

Barry Irby

In the middle 70'sI sold modern timber frame houses made for reclaimed timbers. I saved a few timbers. A few years ago I reswed them and made a side board. I cut the timber so a quartersawn surface would show up and also rift sawed the legs.

Probably the hardest part was sanding the pine. Did a lot of it in my Performax. Found I was lucky if I could get a single pass. Then remove the belt and soak it in a jug of water and Simple Green. Must have traded out the belt a hundred times. If I had had good sense I would have used scrapers and planes.

Re: Fat pine?

John K Jordan

Thanks, Mike - very interesting! The floors in my house are old-growth heart pine said to be reclaimed wood such as you mention.

But I want to know where you stored the 60' long 4x10 "stick" of the stuff?

Let me know you want some of the Fat pine I have for a box or two.

JKJ

Re: pine

AZ in Colorado Springs

That looks like the beetle kill pine we have here in Colorado. I think it's called a bark beetle. Leaves a lot of blue streaks in the wood.