Home Dried Timber

[Terry Lawson]

I'm relatively new to wood turning and over the last 12 months have started collecting pieces of timber from neighbour's gardens etc.

I have several pieces of apple, pear, eucalyptus, coppiced beech and what I believe to be holly.

What is the best (cheapest way) to get this timber home dried to a usable condition?
Currently the timber has had the bark left on and the ends sealed with a couple of coats of polyurethane varnish and I'm keeping under weather proof cover in my external sawn timber store.
Did I ought to remove the bark and sapwood (turn off or bandsaw) to speed up the drying procedure?

The pieces range from 3"  to 9" diameter and vary in length from  about 8" to 24"

I haven't decided what I will produce from the pieces so can't turn them green to approximate finished size

At the start of this message I said I have what I believe to be holly, not sure, but I've attached a pic showing the timber a very small of cut of which I've tuned to roughly turned to about 2" x 4", the larger portion has a "smooth" bark which has changed colour to a purple/brown colour.

I would really appreciate any assistance as I'm still new to this game.

Regards

Terry Lawson

[Lazurus]

I think you may have picked difficult fruit woods to start your supply, in my experience all the fruit woods are difficult to season and are renowned for splitting, I use a chainsaw mill and recently did some pear which looked lovely, however even when milled then cut on the band saw and sealed with wax 50% are checking and may be lost.Keep you stocks out of the rain and sun and with a good airflow to assist drying.

The wood you show is not Holly, which is very pale / white with a greenish tinge as it dries, it may be Laburnum which is a nice wood to turn.

S.

[Les Symonds]

I'd say,. beyond a shadow of doubt, that your log is laburnum, which is prized for the contrast between heartwood and sapwood, so I really wouldn't turn the sapwood away to speed up the process.
It sounds to me as though you're doing the right thing, already, but it's going to need a fair degree of patience as the old rule of thumb that wheelwrights used for seasoning timbers was to allow 1 year for each inch of thickness. Admittedly, that was for fairly hefty timbers; smaller logs take somewhat less time to season, but would probably need a few years. You can speed the process by splitting logs along the pith, if the split-log suits your needs! Whatever...keep the bark on because its natures way of regulating moisture loss out of the tree.....strip the bark and the log will dry too quickly.
Les

[fuzzyturns]

I think you've done about the best you could. Keep the bark on, seal the ends (varnish, wax or PVA glue generally work well for this) and keep them out of the sun and rain. Unless you know where each piece is going, keep it at maximum size, this will allow you lose some wood to cracking and still end up with usable pieces.

Once you have a better idea of pieces you want to make, rough turn them to about double the final wall size, and let them dry out some more inside the house. This will cause some warping, but you should have a limited number of failures due to cracks. Buy yourself a moisture meter, they are quite affordable. For boxes (where the lid should fit nicely) you will want to have moisture content below 10%, otherwise you'll find that the day after you finish turned a piece the lid won't fit any longer. For other items you can work with slightly higher moisture contents, up to about 14%, but be aware that there will be some movement in the piece afterwards.

The wood in the picture is definitely laburnum, a good wood for turning, as it is quite hard and generally has nice grain. The downside is that laburnum is toxic, so make sure you don't ingest any of it. And don't use it for anything that comes into contact with food.

[Terry Lawson]

Very many thanks for your very prompt and detailed replies.

Pity my "holly" is laburnum, sort of earmarked it for a pair of salt and pepper mills!!

Fuzzyturns mentioned a moisture meter, I put one together based on the multimeter design given by matthias  at https://woodgears.ca/lumber/moisture_meter.html, realise it's invasive and only produces results at probe depth (10mm), but to make any sense of it I need a table of resistance-moisture content for UK/European timber similar to that for American timber at www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr06.pdf, does anyone know if such tables exist and where?

Alternatively is there a moisture meter that is preferred by members of the forum?

Regards
Terry Lawson

[Lazurus]

Lidls are currently doing a moisture meter for under a tenner, got to be worth a try?

S.

Where are you located as I am milling some Holly this week?

[Terry Lawson]

Steyning, West Sussex

[Lazurus]

What size holly blanks do you need for the mills and I will see what I have when I mill the holly logs

[Terry Lawson]

75x75x400mm but:

I've already made 3 sets (wife and 2 daughters) very recently and don't really need to make any more, it was the colour and grain on the laburnum that attracted me to the project.

However if we can get to a reasonable agreement about getting the timber to me I will take whatever I can get.



 

[Paul Hannaby]

Bear in mind that laburnum is toxic so perhaps not the best choice for anything in contact with food.

[Terry Lawson]

Paul

Thanks, already noted from previous messages in the thread
 

[seventhdevil]

once dried it should be fairly inert...   it's the seeds that are the dangerous part of a laburnum and even then you would have to eat loads for any harm to become of you.

you could always seal the interior with epoxy if you are a bit on the paranoid side about the subject.

[Terry Lawson]

Interesting

Suspect won't find many laburnum seeds in the heartwood!

[Les Symonds]

...it's the seeds that are the dangerous part of a laburnum ...

Not so, Steve. It is commonly accepted that laburnum should not be palnted in schools and parks becasue children have become ill through eating the seeds, but the whole plant is poisonous.
This quote comes from 'The Poison Garden' website... All parts of the tree are poisonous: roots, bark, wood, leaves, flower-buds, petals, and seedpods.

Les

[bodrighywood]

once dried it should be fairly inert...   it's the seeds that are the dangerous part of a laburnum and even then you would have to eat loads for any harm to become of you.

you could always seal the interior with epoxy if you are a bit on the paranoid side about the subject.

Sorry you are wrong here Steve. There is toxin all parts of the tree. Same with yew and also to some extent iroko. I know that a lot of people thin that the toxin is in only parts of the trees but it isn't. It is predominantly in the seeds but there are residues in all parts of both trees. Most woods have some form of toxin in fact and if you delve deeply you can scare yourself out of using a lot of woods though most are only hazardous in certain circumstances.


Pete