# alcohol drying



## bikeshooter (Nov 5, 2010)

I going to start offering stabilized pen blanks and understand that they need to be exceptionally dry prior to working with the resin. I ran across this article concerning alcohol drying and thought I'd pass it on.

http://woodcentral.com/articles/turning/articles_473.shtml


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## wildwood (Jan 25, 2011)

Alcohol drying might prove an un-necessary step in the process of stabilizing pen blanks. 
Thanks for sharing.


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## bikeshooter (Nov 5, 2010)

wildwood said:


> Alcohol drying might prove an un-necessary step in the process of stabilizing pen blanks.
> Thanks for sharing.


When I get going with this I'm going to give it a shot just to see what happens. If the blanks don't loose weight after the alcohol treatment I'll know better next time. 

It would be interesting to hear if anyone has dried a green turned bowl with this method.


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## Midlandbob (Sep 5, 2011)

Interesting but it sound to good to be true. The science if unexplained and the research controls are not clearly defined.
In the. PEG system, the water is replaced by PEG. It takes longer to soak the wood and allow the exchange than this system seems to take.
The follow up will be important and maybe a new tools is available.
If it just speeds drying but does not stabilise the wood, then patience to air dry is still a good option. 
I find the waiting not a problem as there is always a supply of raw material and 1st turned wood that is dry enough to finish turn. A large volume turner with storage issues for the drying projects would benefit from the alcohol.
I hope we hear more. I have tried to email Dave Smith.


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## bikeshooter (Nov 5, 2010)

I have a vacuum chamber on the way and plan to use alcohol rather than a stabilizer for the first run. I'm interested to see if the alcohol will displace any water left in the dried blanks. I'll post up the results when I finish.


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## bikeshooter (Nov 5, 2010)

Well, I gave it a shot.
I used 2 batches of 10 each. Both weighed within a few grams of each other. On 1 batch I used a vacuum chamber to pull alcohol into the blanks in hopes of displacing water. I gave them a couple of days to air dry and then put both batches into a toaster oven at 200 degrees to finish drying. After just under 8 hours both had stopped losing moisture weight and both were with a few grams of each other. The alcohol soaked blanks did not loose any more weight than the kiln dried ones.

Looks like this is wasted effort.


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