# Drying bowls (or other stuff) in shavings



## Quickstep (Apr 10, 2012)

I've read several accounts where someone mentioned that they roughed a bowl from wet wood and then stored it in a paper bag with shavings. I'm wondering if this would be a good thing for me to do with peppermills that are turned from wood that's not quite dry. 

These may be a dumb questions, but do the shavings accelerate drying, or slow it down? What does the paper bag add to the process? How long does it need to say in the bag with shavings?

I'm wondering if this would be a good route to take with my peppermills. In theory, I could drill out the center undersize, round the outside oversize and put them in a bag with shavings for some period of time. 

I'd appreciate any advice anyone can provide.


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## arvanlaar (Dec 29, 2014)

I would imagine the shavings absorb the moisture. Kind of like how you can use shaving instead of litter for rabbit cages.


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

I am not a fan of using shavings. By the time that you gather up the shavings they will be much drier than the wood and will act as a desiccant to accelerate the wood drying. Generally that is a very bad idea. You could just bag the piece without shavings. Tape the bag shut to help seal it. The bag creates a trapped environment that slows down the rate of moisture loss which is what you need to minimize warping and cracking.

I suggest that you start with dry wood when making peppermills or boxes. What you are doing is risky because there may be some loss of wood on the ends due to checking as well as warping that you may not be able to correct. Attempting to get both the inside and outside concentric after they have warped may turn out to be a challenge if you haven't left lots of extra material on both sides.

Experienced woodturners who make lots of peppermills always say as an absolute rule to begin with dry wood. I figure that they know what they are talking about.


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## john lucas (Sep 18, 2007)

I stopped using shavings on the bag a long time ago. It didn't seem to have any advantages over just using the bag and it caused the bowl to mold more readily. I'm sure you don't want that on your pepper mills. In fact you might want to change bags after a few days or a week to cut down on the mold growth.


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## Quickstep (Apr 10, 2012)

At least for me, it's been very rare to find fully dried wood. Most of the stuff I have gotten is years away from being usable. If anyone knows a source for dry 3X3 squares, I would sure appreciate knowing about it


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## Bill Boehme (Feb 9, 2014)

Quickstep said:


> At least for me, it's been very rare to find fully dried wood. Most of the stuff I have gotten is years away from being usable. If anyone knows a source for dry 3X3 squares, I would sure appreciate knowing about it


I have found kiln dried maple, cherry, and walnut blanks at Rockler's and Woodcraft. Mesquite doesn't warp so it is a good choice. Imported tropical hardwoods are a different story ... some of it never dries.


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## 9thousandfeet (Dec 28, 2014)

I've been making and selling between 50-75 peppermills per year for the last few years. 
I prep my own blanks into cylinders from local woods, walnut, maple and various fruitwoods mostly, and they take three years to dry at 12" long and a little over 3" diameter with the ends dipped in Anchorseal.

If I pre-bored them they may well dry a little quicker, but certainly not in less than a year, and probably closer to two, and I'd have the extra work of pre-boring _and_ the extra work of fiddling around to re-establish concentricity once they had dried.

So for me that game would not be worth the candle.

I don't use wood shavings as a drying inhibitor either. I paint all endgrain on spindle-oriented blanks, and the entire rim and outside surface of all rough-turned bowls, with Anchorseal, then just let time do the rest.
The hard part is establishing a supply line in various stages of drying out. Once that's established, though, the issue of speeding up the drying process never really arises anymore, 'cos there's always _something_ ready to be worked.

Air-dried wood which has been allowed to reach equilibrium with the ambient climate in its own good time is so superior in almost every respect to kiln-dried wood, and so much more pleasurable to work, that it's more than worth the initial labor to get set up in that way.


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## Quickstep (Apr 10, 2012)

Bill Boehme said:


> I have found kiln dried maple, cherry, and walnut blanks at Rockler's and Woodcraft. Mesquite doesn't warp so it is a good choice. Imported tropical hardwoods are a different story ... some of it never dries.


I've got some blanks at the local woodcraft when we had one, but no more. As you might have already imagined, I'm often looking for exotics.


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## firehawkmph (Apr 26, 2008)

Quick,
I don't know if the shavings make a real difference. I have thrown a couple handfuls in the paper bag, but probably more like a witch doctor sticks pins in a voodoo doll. I also would not recommend turning peppermills from anything but dry stock. One thing you can do is glue up several pieces of flat stock that is dry to make your blanks. I used to do that quite a bit. Mix up the colors and you'll get some neat looking peppermills. You might also check a mill work shop and see if they have any 12/4 stock. Many times they will and it's dry. 
Mike Hawkins


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## dearlw (Nov 16, 2015)

works for me. I do it a lot on wet wood with no problems seems to work.


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## saculnhoj (May 18, 2015)

I buy my exotic timber from http://www.bigmonklumber.com/ Pete will tell you up front that he has no way of knowing how dry or wet the blanks are. They were cut and could sit on a dock for months or maybe just days. they are completely coated in wax which really slows down the drying. I buy them and then scrape the wax off the sides but leave it on the ends. I try my best to stack them in order of purchase but don't always succeed. I really should date them. It does take a long time to dry. I will often rough turn them and then dry the rough turning in the microwave. I make mostly boxes which are about as critical to dryness as pepper mills.


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## Jerry Maske (Dec 29, 2013)

I live along the coast of Maine. Lot of humidity and don't have much problem getting wood to dry. I go to a local Log Yard and buy trees that were cut down ten minutes ago, so they are as wet as wet can be. The yard cuts them to length for me and load them in my Van. The last time, the Van body actually rubbed against a tire; yeah, I do tend to overdo things.

As soon as I get them home, I Anchor Seal them until I can get to them. Now, here's the part that's amazing to me. I've "Rough Turned" Big bowls; 16" in diameter, and let them sit out on a table. Maple, ROCK Maple, dries just fine. I've added the paper bag and see no difference. The odd part is that sometime the log sealed with Anchor Seal sitting in the garage will split and the bowls won't!

My take is to get the wood either sealed well or turned into a uniformly thick walled and bottom bowl as quick as possible. These logs are usually 18" long and 16" across, they are really wet and VERY heavy. But if you're going to do the task, you need to deal with it.

I've dried other woods the same way, Monkey Pod, Koa, Avocado and Leeche. Oak ALWAYS causes me grief no matter what I do, so go figure that out.

Good luck with it. Dry your spindle blanks BEFORE you drill them out if you can for all the reasons given. Won't take long and you'll have stock on hand no matter what you're making.


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## d.frana (Dec 15, 2010)

*drying wood*

I usually dry wood in shavings in a paper sack. The only time I ever had the wood get moldy was with spalted wood. I try to make the shavings are as close as possible to the moisture of the piece. If I can't get it rough turned right away I'll save some of the shavings in a plastic sack until I'm ready to put the piece away. I pack shavings inside the bowl and all around it in the sack.


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## Woodychips (Oct 3, 2015)

As soon as I get them home said:


> Something went screwy with the quote function. Will try again


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## Woodychips (Oct 3, 2015)

revjerry said:


> I live along the coast of Maine. Lot of humidity and don't have much problem getting wood to dry. I go to a local Log Yard and buy trees that were cut down ten minutes ago, so they are as wet as wet can be. The yard cuts them to length for me and load them in my Van. The last time, the Van body actually rubbed against a tire; yeah, I do tend to overdo things. As soon as I get them home, I Anchor Seal them until I can get to them. Now, here's the part that's amazing to me. I've "Rough Turned" Big bowls; 16" in diameter, and let them sit out on a table. Maple, ROCK Maple, dries just fine. I've added the paper bag and see no difference. The odd part is that sometime the log sealed with Anchor Seal sitting in the garage will split and the bowls won't! My take is to get the wood either sealed well or turned into a uniformly thick walled and bottom bowl as quick as possible. These logs are usually 18" long and 16" across, they are really wet and VERY heavy. But if you're going to do the task, you need to deal with it. I've dried other woods the same way, Monkey Pod, Koa, Avocado and Leeche. Oak ALWAYS causes me grief no matter what I do, so go figure that out. Good luck with it. Dry your spindle blanks BEFORE you drill them out if you can for all the reasons given. Won't take long and you'll have stock on hand no matter what you're making.



A log will never dry in one piece without splitting in some way or another. You will get splits at the end grain for sure and depending on how long the log sits, maybe a side split as well. Your logs are only 18" long so you have left little room for degrade at both ends. I have dried a 7' long by 15" dia. walnut log that sat in my shop for approx 10 years. I lost about 14" of wood on both ends. I had another 6' curly maple log that sat for about 5 years and it had a side split from top to bottom. 


The reason that you can rough turn a bowl and dry it without splitting is because the bulk of internal material has been removed. This allows the bowl to shrink inward and outward into that oval shape. A log when it dries has nowhere to shrink except inwards towards the core. Something has to give. That's why they split. 

I use end sealer on most of my rough turnings and I paper bag them as well. Some woods like black cherry and walnut need extra care when drying. Others like poplar and Manitoba maple are a breeze.


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## Jerry Maske (Dec 29, 2013)

Woodychips,
And of course, you're right. Any log will split at some point in time regardless of how much Anchor Seal you use. My "Trick" is to buy what I can get to before that happens. Lets face it, Rough Turning a bowl doesn't take much time. The "trick" to it is to do the prep work well. By that I mean the Chain Saw work. I get the ends square to each other, cut out the pith, knock off the bark, cut the ends so that they are close to round and get as much excess wood off as I can. It's easier to pick up that way and the lathe likes a lighter, more balanced piece of wood a lot better. Turning a wet piece of Rock Maple is fun too. I've had so much water on my tools I was actually able to taste some of it and could tell that this would have made Maple Syrup! Yeah, that's a wet log.

Richard Raffin aludes to the fact that drying wood in log form or rough turned bowls is a crap shoot and will be different for each of us depending on where we live. The humidity in Maine is always above fifty percent at all times of the year, and usually half again that much. I've got a work table I use as my guide. I stick my moisture meter into the legs, fifteen year old 2 x4, and that's what I take as "Ambient." Yesterday, it was twelve percent. If that old chunk of wood is still at twelve, how could any of the other wood get any lower? But, that's where I live.


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