Cookie Cutting

Peter Rideout

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Messages
1,662
Location
Nova Scotia, 45°N 64°W
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Okay guys, here’s a new chapter in our 2021 urban logging theme. We’ve removed an old sugar maple that was threatening to fall onto the house during some hurricane and are stabilizing the big pieces for sawing. Looks like there might be some interesting figured wood and crotches there. Our son said we should take a big cookie or two off the stump for future rustic table tops.
How would you stabilize the cookies? Paint both sides with my salvaged exterior latex (it’s all I have, really) ? I doubt it would penetrate much, so would clean off with a router sled when the time comes.

Beside the tractor you can see a red oak we planted two years ago to take over the yard shading duties. It’s coming along nicely.
 
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Tricky..

Pentacryl, or Polyethylene Glycol if you can get it, would help.

I've had some luck curing them under water for a few months (they'll actually kind of .. not dry... but the cells shrink I guess?

I have some LARGE mytle slices that are 50 some years old that a fellow put in his cool, and not to dry basement for the first 30 some years (then his daughter had them ?somewhere? and I've had them in the rather less temperate garage for the last 10 or so) and none of those cracked.. so if you can keep them cool and not dry to fast that'll help.

I've never tried either of these (on the long end of the short end of the medium list..) but the bowl drying tricks of boiling the wood (1 hr per inch, make sure to account for heat expansion or you've made a bomb) or soaking in the dish soap mix would be interesting to try.
 
Thanks Ryan. Maybe they’ll find a spot in the barn basement where the animals are housed. It’s always a bit damp down there.
I’ll also paint the end grain. We’ll see how it goes, I don’t have too much invested in them.
 
From what I can tell speed is paramount in treating them as well.. once they start to check it's pretty hard to stop it.. If you have a feed tub I might throw a couple in that down there for a month or two with some water just for comparison.
 
Oh and also I've had some luck with cutting them on a bit of a bias.. although those did tend to warp more.. and a couple had some center cracks (instead of edge cracks.. which was weird.. not sure why).
 
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