Anchor Seal, Wax and Paint for Sealing Wood Bowl Blanks

One of the Woodturning Basics Facebook group members had a question regarding wood bowl drying and blank drying. I’m a little late with my reply so I thought I would post an answer here.

One thing to remember about drying wood for woodturning is that it is almost always different for each project. That is, same wood species, same size blank and same bowl blank shape …..seems they all dry differently. Sometimes you get cracks and checks …..sometimes you don’t. However, there are some things you can do to get similar results on a consistent basis.

You can approach the subject of drying wood from many levels of understanding. There are FB groups that focus on nothing but drying wood, you could start your own blog if you had an intimate knowledge of drying wood. For our purposes, drying wood for woodturning can be very basic or can get somewhat complex depending on how you want to approach the subject. Some turners will turn green wood to finished size and shape and call it quits …. and some turners will take it to the other extreme of needing to have a bowl blank that is totally dry and acclimated to the humidity in their shop before they will turn and finish a bowl.

I like to keep my woodturning fun! I want to enjoy the process and not get too caught up in details other than safety!

For me, turning green wood is a lot more fun than turning a dry, rock hard piece of wood that requires you sharpen you tools every 15 minutes…….but that’s me.

And, I like to turn finished green bowls. Let them dry, warp and hopefully not crack. However, when doing it this way I turn with a recess so I can chuck it up if it cracks and needs repair…… others will say that is not the way to turn wood …..but it works for me 🙂

Anyway, I thought I would post some ideas, thoughts and videos on how others approach using things like anchor seal, paint and wax for sealing and drying their wood turning blanks and bowls…..so let’s get started!

Anchor Seal and Drying
Wood Bowl Blanks

Bryan, sorry didn’t reply to your txt ….had some outpatient surgery, been in and out of it for last couple days.

Is the wood bowl blank roughed out? In other words, did you roughly turn the bowl with the thickness of the walls of the bowl being 10% of the width of the bowl. So if you were turning a 12″ bowl (roughing it out) the wall thickness should be somewhere around 1-1/4″.

rough turned bowl ready to dry — Do not use anchor seal on a rough turned bowl, dry in shavings or kiln

You really don’t want to put anchor seal or any other wood-sealant on a rough turned bowl. You will want to dry it using the shavings in a bag method, you could try to put the bowl on a shelf, floor level to mid floor say 4′ up and see how it is drying …..if it starts to crack, throw it immediately into a bag or box of shavings.

log ends painted and covered with anchor seal — log ends painted and cover

There are a handful of products used to seal end grain on wood from trees to keep it from drying too fast and therefore cracking and checking. Anchor Seal is one of the popular sealants to use for end grain sealing, however, check out what is available for end grain sealers if you have an unusual situation and for a greater variety!

Make a Portable Kiln
For Drying Wood Bowl Blanks

There is a guy who sticks a light bulb in a box along with the rough turned bowl and sometimes a small fan, he will put a thermometer in there and he will have a vent hole in the box someplace. Basically you are setting the bowl on a table, putting a light bulb (40 to 60 watt incandescent) and puts a box over it. It seems that he will dry a rough turned bowl in 5 to 10 days….again, weigh the bowl and write it down, watch to see how it is losing water weight.

Rick from the youtube channel RickTurns makes a quick, easy, and very inexpensive drying box for bowl blanks!

Check out Sam’s kiln from the Youtube Channel WyomingWoodTurner

Microwave Treatment for
Drying Wood Bowl Blanks

Another method for drying your woodturning blanks is to use a microwave. I have experimented with this using oak and cottonwood with some good results. Again, weight the bowl to start with….nuke it at 60 seconds 3 to 6 times, again….experiment to see what works for you. Then increase the time to 2 minutes per nuke. Do not let the bowl get “hot” you will literally see steam coming off the bowl.

I’ve done bowl blanks in the microwave that have been finished in one day and I’ve done bowls that I dried over a week or so…… the slower you do it the less likely it will crack! Sometimes I will start the drying process by nuking in the microwave for a day …usually working at night, and then set on the shelf for a week or so……I will usually keep track of the daily weight loss, I write it directly on the bowl or a piece of masking tape on the bowl. I picked up my scale from Amazon, use it all the time ….even when I do some cooking 🙂 I think this one will actually weight up to 100 lbs or so …… if you are serious about turning wood and want to process your own local woods you need a scale

No Anchor Seal or Paint
on Rough Turned Bowl Blanks

All the above drying methods are for naked wood…..no anchor seal or paint.

Drying and Storing Your Wood
Logs Using Anchor Seal

If I cut a log in half, or cut a log so the pith is cut out and I have 2 pieces, I will then usually store the log outside (under a tarp if I can) or inside in an area I try to keep my future log blanks in. These are the pieces that I seal both ends of the log to keep from cracking.

Painted Log Ends — Ends of logs painted with Anchor Seal to prevent checking and cracking

I will even paint or use anchor seal on logs that are 4 foot or longer that I have laying around waiting to be processed. Sometimes I get to them quickly, other times it might be 2 years in which case, as the log is sitting there I will put another coat or two of anchor seal or paint on the ends of the log to keep it from drying quickly on the outside and causing cracks and checking.

Circular Bowl Blank Preparation

Drying circular blanks that are cut from a half log can be treated in a different ways when it comes to drying.

I’m assuming you have half a log, you either use a circle jig for your band saw or you draw a circle on the flat side of the log and cut it on your band saw.

So now lets say you have a 10″ wide bowl blank that is circular shaped and maybe 5″ inches deep. This is how I store these types of blanks. I will apply anchor seal, wax or paint to the outside of the bowl blank, on the 5″ side all around the bowl blank. That leaves 2 sides with no treatment, the 10″ circular top and bottom. Often times one of those will be covered with bark. Feel free to strip the bark if you are not going to make a live edge bowl.

Seal the entire circumference of that bowl blank. That will include end grain and side grain. It will dry, but slowly dry because you have the top and bottom of the blank exposed to air. I am usually not so much interested in drying the piece but more interested in keeping it from cracking and checking. You can store this piece indoors or outside for years. If I have gone to the trouble of cutting a circular bowl blank I usually will store these inside.

Drying Or Storing A
Wood Blank With Stretch Wrap

I also have gotten good results with using shrink wrap or packaging stretch wrap around the outside circumference of the bowl blank. I wrap it several times with the plastic wrap and set it aside to be stored or dried. I have had most of them develop some type of mold under the plastic wrap but when turned on the lathe the mold is gone.

wood bowl blank shrink wrapped — Use packaging wrap or shrink wrap to cover the outside wall of the bowl blank

I’ve checked blanks wrapped with plastic for weight loss and they do lose water weight over time. I think I prefer anchor seal or paint over using the plastic shipping wrap, although, the shipping wrap provides a quick solution to sealing up bowl blanks…..you can always rip it off and apply the anchor seal or paint. If you don’t mind a little mold, go with the plastic stretch wrap especially if you plan to turn it quickly and the wrap is there just to keep it from cracking or checking.

I use the stretch wrap when I cut a bunch of round bowl blanks that I plan on turning over the next week or two. Just so happens that some of them were never put on the lathe and sat wrapped in plastic for a year. These blanks did not crack and lost water weight…..but they grew mold.

Final Bowl Blank Drying Thoughts

There are 2 schools of thought when it comes to turning wood. Turning wood bowls with “dry” wood bowl blanks and turning bowls with “wet” bowl blanks. In either scenario you would like to turn the bowl blank while it does not have any checks or cracks, so treating and storing your wood and bowl blanks becomes a matter of “what works” and it is a priority!

First method, lets say you have a 5 foot log.

You can turn 12″ bowls so you cut 12″+ pieces off the log. If you want 2 bowl blanks, cut off one 12″+ piece. Then get your anchor seal or paint and seal up the fresh cut on the log.

If you are turning the bowl blank wet then you don’t need to do anything except cut a circular bowl blank and put it on your lathe. Turn it and then dry it as you desire. No need to use any anchor seal, wax or paint ……unless you want to preserve the round rough turned bowl blank as it is. If you seal all edges it will probably stay as it is….moisture wise, and will not crack. You can put it on the lathe any time and then dry as desired.

rough turned wood bowl — Rough turned wood bowl with wall size 10% of width, no anchor seal or paint, ready to be put away for drying

My Wood Bowl Blank Cracked and Checked

When I first started to work with wood bowl blanks almost all of them cracked and checked so I learned how to turn cracked wood bowl blanks and make repairs. This is really another matter but don’t throw out your bowl blank because its cracked!

Keep in mind however, depending on how bad it is cracked or checked you might need to do the repairs before you turn it so it doesn’t fly apart while on your lathe. Otherwise I usually will turn the piece to rough form, then use CA and coffee grounds, shavings or sawdust to seal and glue the crack together. The cracks can actually make the piece look better 🙂

If you are not familiar with CA glue, here is a CA glue starter kit that will help you get started using CA with your woodturning projects.

Oak wood bowl with cracks filled with CA and coffee grounds.

Free Wood and How to Dry It In Your Small Shop

Shawn (I think that’s his name) from youtube channel “worththeeffort” has a couple of great videos on how to process lumber from local trees for woodworking and woodturning. He is a great teacher and explains the concept behind drying wood so that you can understand the reason for the madness of drying wood 🙂

I noticed he recommends coating the end grain in his rough turned bowl blanks before putting them up to dry. Number one, you need to be able to identify the end grain ….#2 I’m not so sure that is necessary. However, its up to you to experiment with drying your wood bowl blanks and what works for you and the wood you are working with.

I will post 2 videos from Shawn’s channel. One he talks about drying in general and #2 he talks about building a kiln from an old broken freezer case. Something I plan on doing soon!

Make a Small Shop Kiln from a Freezer/Fridge

Collecting Wood That Was Destined for The Fireplace and Using it For Making FREE WoodTurning Bowl Blanks

First Piece From A Portable
Bandsaw Yields [14] FREE 12″
Cherry Bowl Blanks

This article is kind of an add on to a previous post I did on collecting free bowl blanks by interacting with a variety of sawmilling people and businesses. If this post interests you please check out Free Source of Wood Blanks From Slabs.

We picked up some oak, hickory and cherry logs. A homeowner basically clear cut his yard to build a new home. I might mention that they were millennial’s from the city and they didn’t like trees. They wanted to move to the country and get out of the cement city. But they did not want trees for some reason. On one hand its sad to see some old growth forests taken down but on the other hand, it is either firewood, building timbers or free wood bowl blanks for me!

It was actually kind of tragic since whatever wasn’t to be used by us would get burned up in one big pile. And they did not want any trees in their yard….. so 200 year oak trees along with many other trees were clear cut so they could have a lawn!

Harvesting Logs for Woodturning
From New Construction Site!

I’m not a tree hugger, but I hate to see a forest, that is a 200+ year forest removed because some yuppie wants to build a house. I’m thankful that we were able to collect and use some of the wood for firewood and some of the trees were milled into lumber and some will be used for wood bowl blanks.

I have 2 interests when it comes to trees, logging and making things out of the wood you get from harvesting a tree ….my main excitement comes from the wood I harvest for turning bowls. I have been learning the best way to harvest this wood and the best way to dry it so I can share it with other wood turners.

What you see in this video is the first cut that comes off the log as it is on the bandsaw mill. The sawyer tries to cut a “cant” which is basically a piece of wood that is square or longitudinal. Once the cant is shaped he will cut it down to dimensional lumber or whatever you want. So the very first cut is the “slab” which is semi-circular on the bark side and flat on the cut side. You can usually get the “slab” for free or next to nothing and they make excellent bowl blanks!

Collecting Slab Cuts for Woodturning Bowl Blanks

Since I am kind of new at this I was interested in that first piece that is cut off of each side. Years ago I would go to the local sawmill and pick up these slab pieces for free and use them in my wood stove to heat my house.

Now I see another use for these “slabs” or first cuts. They are the perfect shape for bowl blanks!

If you can talk the “sawyer” into adding an inch or two to the first cut you will end up with some pretty awesome bowl blanks, you can do some pretty nice live edge work and even if they might not be as thick as you want they can easy make platters or shallow dishes. Of course if you hired him to cut a log then you can tell him how thick you want those pieces. Or better yet if you really start to get into making and collecting your own free wood bowl blanks you can get a small gasoline bandsaw mill for under $2000 and you’ll have enough bowl blanks for a lifetime. In fact, I plan on cutting up a few logs and harvesting these free bowl blanks and selling them at some point in time. There are lots of folks in my woodturning facebook group that are always looking for wood to turn …..so the market is there and I would be helping my fellow turners.

Up to Now We’ve Been Following The Bandsaw Around and Helping
Him For Some Free Bowl Blanks

Up to this point I have been talking about following the “sawyer” around and snagging the stuff nobody wants. It is a very good source of turning materials. Make sure you give the guy a couple of your nicest bowls 🙂

There is another option. And I’ve mentioned if briefly.

#1 Hire Out The Services of A
Local Sawyer and His Bandsaw Mill

You can find someone with a portable bandsaw mill that will come to your property and literally cut up a log into any size pieces you might want.

Let’s say a storm comes in and blows down a hickory tree. You can try to cut it up into wood-turning blanks with a chainsaw ….and that’s cool. You will end up with a lot of stock.

You can have a portable sawmill come in and slice up every trunk, branch or whatever is available into the thickness you need for your turning projects. At this point you can dry the pieces for yourself or you might even consider selling some. Or perhaps share the cost with another woodturner or woodturning club.

Lets say you have a 12′ log on the band-saw mill. You can have the sawyer cut a couple of slabs that might be bowl blanks ….remember to tell him to make them bigger than normal ….tell him why and he will began to understand what you want. That log will give you 4 slabs at least 12″ wide and 4 inches deep. Then you can cut the middle of the log into lumber that could be used for spindles ….so 2 or 3″ thick and then you could cut some bigger bowl blanks 6+ inches thick. You would be amazed at how many blanks you will end up with. Just remember to treat them properly for drying so you don’t get checks and cracks.

Make sure you tell him how you want to handle the pith. You do not want that pith in the middle of your thick blanks.

Then tell him what size you want the tree to be cut up into. For instance, lets say you want some big bowls so you tell him to cut 6″ or 8″ thick slices. Once you get your slices you will need to quickly cut them into blanks sizes ….say 14″ and seal the ends. Then you need to dry them, either in shavings or a dehumidifier of some sort or commercial drying company.

One big tree could get you all the wood you every wanted for your woodturning needs. Or it might even set you off on another adventure where you collect, process and treat bowls blanks for others to use.

My FREE Woodturning Bowl Blanks

Free Wood Bowl Blanks from portable bandsaw mill — Cherry “slab” cut that I cut into 14″ long blanks.

This slab yielded me about 12 free cherry bowl blanks that were about to be cut down to 12″, each had a unique shape.

The slab had been sitting outside for a year so it was getting dry. The bowls I made from that piece where further dried in the microwave …..60 second blasts, maybe 4 or 5 times a day.

It was beautiful wood. I did some with live edges and the bark stuck hard, some of the bowls/platters were traditional and only took about 4 times in the microwave …..which I’m guessing would have been 4 months in a bag of shavings.

This picture was from one of the small cherry bowl blanks. It was a 12″ blank I cut on my bandsaw and about 4 inches thick. One thing you don’t want to do when turning these small and thin platters/bowls is to use a recess to mount your cut. That will eliminate the amount of wood that can be gouged out of the bowl. You should use a tenon, to turn the bowl and obviously cut the tenon off at the end of the project.

cherry bowl from bandsaw mill slab — A bowl blank was taken from the first cut of a log called the “slab’ it was 14″ long and about 4” thick. The natural curvature of the outside of the first piece lent itself perfectly to the bowl shape.

My whole purpose of this post and video was to show you that there are many sources of wood that you can find and use to turn your creations. And, further processing can be expanded from buried in shavings to using a microwave to hurry the process so you can finish it and put it on the market.

This was on of my first microwave dries. I put it in the microwave about 6 times and varied between 60 and 90 seconds. If the bowl gets too hot to touch then you need to reduce the time. So far so good, I keep the microwave procedure going until my scale showed that weight loss had stopped. That means there was no more water to evaporate. I was please, no cracks or checks and I will getting a dedicated microwave for the shop! Thanks to Al Auth from the facebook group who encouraged me to give this procedure a try.

You will need a scale, I like this one …can actually weigh up to 90 pounds but I use it in the kitchen when I get the urge to whip up a gourmet dinner for my favorite wife 🙂

And its nice to have a moisture meter, this one works fine for me

I plan on doing a lot more on my woodturning blog, however, if you haven’t please check out my facebook woodturning group. https://facebook.com/groups/woodturningbasics you’ll find a great group of people there. Some are clueless as to how to start and what to use but then there are the guys that have been turning for 30 or 40 years and can answer any question you might want …..all very good people. I keep the facebook group clean. If you need to swear or make lude and crude jokes or just make fun of someone …..you will be deleted. I want this group to be a family affair. Some of my favorites are Guilherme Eduardo, Al Furtado and I see Capn’ Eddie just signed up…..I think Capn’ Eddie videos were some of the first I started to learn on….. great guy, great wood turner and he served our country, he lived enough life to throw some golden nuggets our way….wish he were my neighbor!

All 3 of those woodturners have excellent woodturning channels on youtube and if you get stuck, you might want to check them out:

Guil ……. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVVt0WnzTJ81S1V7itCEqA/videos

Al………………………. https://www.youtube.com/user/Alfurtado1/videos

Capn’ Eddie………….. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgEbScotUCk64Mnw1jU9jFw/videos

I think this is a second channel Capn’ Eddie started, there is another one with a ton of videos on when he was feeling well and a little younger 🙂
You might want to visit his site to support him, he sells turning tools, equipment and has free tool plans and project plans ….you will learn a lot and he is someone who deserves the “pass it on” mentality http://eddiecastelin.com/

Free Source of Wood Bowl Blanks From “Slabs” Cut By Portable Sawmills

Sawmills As A Free Source of Woodturning and Bowl Blanks

I know there are a lot of people who turn wood and enjoy the hobby have a hard time finding wood.

That’s a little difficult for me to comprehend because we have so many trees that they fall on our houses, or in my case the garage/shop!

There are a lot of good posts on where and how people find different sources of wood. How they collect it and how they process it.

I have one source of wood you might find interesting. There are many sawmills around the country/world large and small. There are many portable sawmills that will come up to your home or property and mill a tree into pieces that you tell them to. You can use these for construction or in our case, get them milled into sizes that we would want for bowl blanks or whatever you happen to turn.

Here’s a source I thought you might be interested in. Portable bandsaw mills are located around the country. You just have to find them. Search for sawmill, portable sawmill or contact any of the manufacturers and ask them if they have any of their mills in your area.

A portable bandsaw mill is basically a trailer with a gasoline powered bandsaw on it. A log is loaded on the trailer and positioned. The saw head is then lowered so the bandsaw blade can make a cut down the length of the log. The sawmill operator is looking to make a flat surface across the top of the log, it is then rotated and another cut is taken. This first cut is usually called a “slab” and this slab will have varying thickness.

This first piece or “slab” is usually worthless to everyone except perhaps for firewood. For woodturners, particularly “bowl turners” this first piece could be gold. Depending on how it is cut you might end up with blanks that could be ‘platters’ up to ‘bowls’. If you were able to convince a sawyer to add an inch or two to the first cut you would end up with as many bowl blanks as you can use since it runs the length of the log.

We had a guy come out and cut up some oak, cherry and poplar logs we had. Nobody wanted the slabs, I asked him to add a couple inches to the first cut and he thought I was crazy. But I ended up with 2 slabs that were 12′ or so long of Cherry. I then cut the slabs into 14″ pieces so I ended up with about 10 or 11 bowl blanks per slab.

These ‘slabs’ as bowl blanks offer 2 types of bowls. You can turn live edge bowls or flip it around and you can cut some nice platters or bowls.

Take this one step further. One of my son’s purchased a bandsaw mill. It is a manual mill, hard work to load the load and then turn it while on the cutting rails. But….I can now cut that first piece any size I want!

Sawing wood is almost as addicting as turning wood. I suppose if I were younger and stronger I might want to a little more sawing 🙂 Keep in mind if you are interested in sawing wood, you can get a sawmill that is all hydraulic, no muscle required! But for the occaisional log here and there I can cut blanks for the next 10 years 🙂 Seriously, I started this article by talking about the first cut for bowl blanks because you can get those free from most sawyers. But if you had your own mill, or had someone come out and cut up a tree for you….. you can have the sawyer cut the log in slabs with the thickness that you desire.

I recently grabbed a cottonwood tree, actually about half the tree came down. I can now cut the slabs and then cut some middle pieces that are 6″ or more thick and then cut them in 12″ pieces that I will seal and stack for drying.

Slab Cut Into Bowl Blank Widths

The picture shows the Cherry “slab” that I cut into 13 to 14″ pieces. The slab sat outside for about a year and was 15% to 20% moisture level. I should have immediately sealed the ends of those pieces but I didn’t. I just don’t have the energy or strenght to do too much anymore …..very depressing but that’s my life. I eventually did seal the ends to keep them from checking and cracking. I think I had about 10 bowl blanks.

Turning the Cherry Bowl Blanks

When turning bowls its nice to have the option of turning live edge bowls. The problem with live edge bowls is that the bark doesn’t stick and gets ripped off. I found this piece of cherry had some decent bark adhesion and it was possible to turn some shallow live edge bowls.

If you try to turn live edge bowls and it almost never fails …..a piece of the bark will rip off and leave a space on the edge. You can sand and shape that edge or you can grab some of the bark and use some CA to glue the bark back on the edge of the bowl. Usually you need to use one of the 2″ sanding disks to shape and blend it into the existing bark …..but a little practice will make it look like it was never missing 🙂

Mounting The Slab Bowl
Blank on Your Lathe

Next would be to turn a bowl from the “slab” bowl blank by making the ‘flat’ side of the blank the top of the bowl. I usually will drill a 2-1/8″ hole with a 2-1/8 inch forstner bit for the jaws of my Super Nova 2 Chuck (click here https://amzn.to/2JUGzXq) and chuck up the flat face against the chuck with the jaws into the recess that I just drilled.

I will next shape the bottom of the bowl so that it looks like a bowl bottom. Normally the bark will fall off your bowl blank or you can pull it off easiy ….no so much with this piece. I read someplace how a turner would remove bark before putting it on the lathe, he used a small air powered chisel to pry and rip off the bark. So……first however I use a cheap harbor freight air powered chisel to take the bark off. The natural profile of the bottom is close to the profile of the bowl. So I will turn a tenon on the bottom of the bowl…..I like recesses but a tenon makes more sense since these ‘slabs’ are usually not too thick and a tenon helps to keep you from blowing through the bottom of the bowl.

I looked around for an air powered chisel and I think I found you a better deal, you get 4 or 5 chisels instead of one and it costs less than $20. You’ll find yourself using this tool a lot but for our specific purpose it and easily strip the bark off a short piece of long in no time.

You ask, “Why do I need to strip off the bark. First let me say, if you are doing a live edge bowl then you might not want to use this tool. But if you are going to turn a bowl that doesn’t have any bark inclusions on in when finished ….this is what you want to use.

Of course you can leave the bark on and use your tools to cut through the bark and get down into the good wood. Unfortunately this is going to give you one hell of a ride. Some bark is attached to your bowl blank like the mountains of the Grand Canyon and other bark might be attached like the gentle rolling hills of the great planes.

Assuming you want to get rid of the bark so you can turn some wood, the bark has to come off. Embedded in the bark are stones, sand, and metal. You never know when stripping the bark will test you patience because your tools will become useless afterwards. I mean, you’re gonna have to go and sharpen them again so they might be cutting good again.

I can’t remember who turned me on to a small air hammer with a chisel to strip the bark from a bowl blank, or log …..but it has been a real blessing to be able to strip the bark off in a couple of minutes rather than using my hammer and chisel to clean the bark off a project whether it be bowl blank or small log. For 20 bucks you just can’t beat it and it might be one of the best wood-tuning investments you make 🙂

As I turn the tenon I will shape the bottom of the bowl/platter. Even if it is wet/green I will shape the bottom of the bowl and then take it through the progression of sanding from 80 grit to at least 240 grit or higher. This 2″ drill powered sanding disk is one of my favorites https://amzn.to/2JSk9WN

I then flip the bowl around, attach it to the tenon and began to square off the front of the bowl. I usually will figure out how deep to take the bowl. Then I will attach a drill bit or forstner bit and drill a hole in the center to the maximum depth of the bowl. This keeps me from gouging out the bottom of the bowl and making a funnel 🙂

Since the “slab” usually isn’t too thick I usually forego keeping pressure on the bowl from the tail-stock. It makes for quick gouging and shaping of the inside of the bowl without fear of the bowl flying off the lathe. That is another reason I like using a tenon on these….. you can crank down on that tenon as hard as you can without damaging the tenon and feeling confident that the bowl will stay on your chuck.

So I finish he inside of the bowl with my Big Hurricane Scrapers and then sand once again through a progression usually starting at 80 or 100 to 240 grit.

After sanding I will either finish the project or dry it. I use a couple different drying methods. If I think the water content is low I will set it on a shelf to dry. If I think it is over 20% moisture (use a moisture meter https://amzn.to/30UNIg9 or https://amzn.to/32V7xFQ ) I will put it in a bag of shavings and let it dry. Or…..my new technique is to put it in the microwave at 60 to 90 seconds. I’m still experimenting with the microwave treatment but I think I like it. You can literally and actually dry a piece within a 24 hour or less period of time and then mount it back up on the lathe ….sand it and apply your desired finish.

Wow!

All I wanted to do was tell you about portable sawmills and “slabs”. Sorry, got a little carried away but I hope you might find some if not all the info helpful.

For those of you who are having a hard time finding wood in your local area ….check out some of the local sawmill operators. Contact these guys ….they really are cool and enjoy doing what they do. If you have a relationship with one, when that tree comes down you might be able to get him to come out on the cheap. You also might be able to come out a job he is milling up ….make sure you give him a couple of bowls and you will have a source of wood for your tuning for a long time 🙂

If you haven’t checked out our facebook group, please do. Lots of good people there, lots of cool projects and if you have a question ….I’m sure you can get it answered. And if you are a woodturing pro or expert …..we can use your advice and you can help newbies out https://www.facebook.com/groups/woodturningbasics

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Anchor Seal and Drying Wood Bowl Blanks

Make a Portable Kiln For Drying Wood Bowl Blanks

Microwave Treatment for Drying Wood Bowl Blanks

No Anchor Seal or Paint on Rough Turned Bowl Blanks

Drying and Storing Your Wood Logs Using Anchor Seal