Drying

Chris Stokes

Member
Messages
5
Location
Vancouver Island Canada
This is my first post,
What does DNA stand for?

I live on Vancouver Island Canada, this is far from a dry climate and I'm wondering if anyone of you could suggest the best way to speed up the process .
 
Chris, Welcome to the Family. :wave:

I live in Iowa where the climate can be very humid and very dry, sometimes changing from morning to evening. I've used many different ways to dry wood, but none without some loss from cracks, checks and such. I would suggest looking for a local or close by turning club and get suggestions from some turners that have tried different things in you climate.

It looks like there may be a few groups in your area...click here.

Good luck and please post some pics of your turnings when you have time. We love pictures here!
 
Hi Chris and welcome to the darkside of the family, :wave:
Do a search in the database for drying, I know we just had a great discussion about it less than a month ago. Below is a great Wood Central link that I think was brought up in the post

http://www.woodcentral.com/cgi-bin/readarticle.pl?dir=turning&file=articles_473.shtml

Short version...get a couple of 5 gal buckets, based on the size of your work, a few gallons of DNA (Home Depot, Lowes, any paint or hardware store) some news paper and masking tape and something to weight the piece down with. The alcohol displaces the H2O and after removal from the bucket, evaporates itself. Use a cheesecloth or foodgrade strainer (beer making supply house) to filter the DNA. Again...that's the very short version. Good luck and post some pic's!! Trust me when I tell you that there is no shortage of inspiration on this board. :thumb:
 
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Welcome abord, Chris. :wave: I'll echo Jim's short version, except I've never felt a need to strain the old DNA. There's some wood sludge built up on the bottom of my bucket, but it doesn't affect the process, as far as I can tell.

The Dave Smith article that Jim linked to is what got a lot of us started using DNA. (By the way Jim, I fixed the link.)
 
Another drying possibility is to make a bowl kiln out of an old refrigerator or freezer, a computer fan, a light bulb and a simple thermostat. Old commercial equipment is good. I did this when I first started turning but soon tired of messing with it. Accumulating green rough turned bowls was so easy I soon had an abundance of dry ready to finish bowls.

You can probably find a lot of information with a search here and on Google.
 
Thanks for the info guy's, you all seem to have the answers. That must come with experience or is it old age that give one the experience......lol

Chris,

When it comes to bowl drying, here's a paraphrase of an old adage: "Good methods come from experience and experience comes from using bad methods."

There are varied and numerous methods for drying bowls. The DNA method is the easiest, most relatively successful method I've found.
 
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