# Sealing fresh wood



## tcarter76

I had a Cherry Blossom cut down today. This is my first green wood. How long do I have before I need to seal the ends and what is the best method?


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## Brian T.

You need to try to equalize the speed of water loss from the cut ends and make that kind of the same as from the sides. Stripping the bark helps to average things out too.
Anything on the ends will do = old house paint, glue = you name it. There's no voo-doo kaa-kaa witchcraft about this - straight forward physics of water evaporation.

Storage: Outdoors, under cover and not cooked in a shed, OK? Slabbed and stickered, you can expect air-dried condition at 1" per year (so a 2" slab might be OK dry in a year.) Move the stickers every 3-4 months so you don't get sticker shadow in the wood.


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## tcarter76

Thanks.


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## tcarter76

If I seal it within 26 hours will it be ok? I read on Anchorseal site to seal immediately after cutting.


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## BigJoe16

tcarter76 said:


> If I seal it within 26 hours will it be ok? I read on Anchorseal site to seal immediately after cutting.


It's best to seal it right away. Hopefully you can cut fresh ends and seal it up


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## Manuka Jock

tcarter76 said:


> I had a Cherry Blossom cut down today. This is my first green wood. How long do I have before I need to seal the ends and what is the best method?


 yep , as stated above , sealing the ends as soon as possible is recommended .
And Anchorseal End Sealer, a water wax emulsion is good


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## john lucas

Seal it as soon as possible. If you don't have a good seal use a plastic bag. This works for a while at least. Wax is best, several coats of end grain sealer next. Paint, glue, tar etc all were a pain and didn't work that well.
The secret is to get it out of the sun and wind.  This is more important than anything else. If you then seal the end grain portions with wax (I use parrafin wax that I melt in an electric skillet) it will last for quite a while. 2 or 3 coats of Anchorseal will work just about as well. 
If you must use paint or glue apply multiple coats and check it periodically. It tends to crack and sometimes flake off. 
Remember this does not dry the wood. It takes many years to dry a log if it even dries at all. All this does is keep it from cracking and lose some water so that you can rough turn or final turn the bowl at a later date. 
The longer you wait the better the chance for it to crack. That's why I find a plastic garbage bag to be about as good. You will get a lot of fungal growth with the bag if you cover the whole log. What I often do is to cover just the end and then tape it down and cut off the excess. The ends will get fungus but you can cut that off or turn it away later.


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## ghost5

I use old paint myself with good luck so far. I seal the ends as soon as I can then it goes in the kiln, drying shed or shop depending on how much effort I want to put into it and how soon I need it. 

Some green wood I mill to shape or rough turn then put it aside to dry. With the solar kilns it can cut it down to 5-6 weeks per inch depending on the wood type. 

Like others said there are many ways to do it but it ain't rocket science although there is some science going on. :yes:


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## NCPaladin

What the others said, I use anchorseal.

I have cracking problems with cherry so I try to split through the pith as soon as possible. You said that you "had" the tree cut down so I don't know if you have access to a chainsaw or not.
I leave the half logs about 4" longer than the diameter to allow for some cracking.
I split allmost all my logs and store them that way. Generally under 9" a split through the pith, 10" taking out a quartersawn piece.
This video shows pretty well processing a log (about minute 6 to 11). He talks about the amount of shrinkage being 8% but I always heard about 10%. For a log 10" diameter you have a 30+ inches to shrink; 3" around the circumference is a lot of cracks.


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## Tyler96

Whats the sticker for mentioned in the previous posts.


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## chopnhack

Tyler96 said:


> Whats the sticker for mentioned in the previous posts.


If the OP had his blossom slabbed out, sliced into 4/4, etc. planks then the stickers (thin strips of wood) are used to raise the planks off of each other allowing air to circulate around the wood. This also allows moisture to be lost fairly equally throughout the entire stack of wood.

good pic of it here at woodweb.com

I am guessing though that the OP has this in larger chunks for turning though ;-)


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