I am still experimenting with the various drying methods, and for the
way I do things I don't notice a whole lot of difference.

At first, I would just turn to about 1/4 to 3/8 thick (wet wood), in
sizes from 16 inches diameter to 3 inches diameter, and put the bowls
on a shelf and let them dry. While I never weighed them, they would be
mostly dry in 2 weeks or less: say about 98% of all movement had
ceased, they were dry enough to sand easily (no loading of the
sandpaper), and didn't feel cool to the touch.

The same seems to hold true for the alcohol bath and LDD methods. I
have never bagged a bowl blank. I have had about the same amount of
cracking with all methods. Most of the cracks coming from cracks in the
wood that I didn't cut out, some knots, and some crotch wood. I left
pieces to soak for 24 hours to a month, and got the same results. I
haven't noticed that any of the methods had any effect on movement,
especially on the Madrone.

I was at a demo at Dale Larsons place and the topic of the alcohol
soaking came up, and there was a chorus responce about alcohol soaking
hardens the wood. I had thought to myself that I had noticed how hard
some of them were to sand before I heard that.

The biggest difference that the LDD soak makes is in sanding. I don't
leave my blanks thick, and then return them, I turn to finish
thickness, and then sand. When sanding any of the LDD bowls, the dust
comes off like big wet snow flakes, rather than fine powder. It does
take about 2 plus weeks for the fragrences in the LDD to go away, but
that is minor.

The last batch that I soaked, I added the last 3 gallons of my left
over alcohol to the LDD mix (10 plus gallons). The biggest difference
that I noticed was that it thinned down the solution so that the mix
dripped off a lot faster when removed from the tub. They sanded out
nicely.

Some time in the future, I will take a bunch of bowl blanks of Madrone
(the most difficult wood I have found to dry), from the same tree,
make them as identical as possible, and try all of the methods, and be
a bit scientific about it all. My curiosity is demanding it of me just
to see what and how much difference there really is.

As far as how it works, I have talked to a number of people about this.
Most recently at my last show. As near as I can tell, alcohol and
glycerine (in the soap) act in similar ways to reduce the surface
tension in the water which allows the water to move out easier. Or
something like that. I don't really care about how it works, just the
end results.

To be continued......

robo hippy