"robo hippy" wrote in message
oups.com...


Derek,
You can take wet turned bowls, dry them slowly, then sand and finish.
If your turning tecnique is good enough, you can wet sand them before
drying. The main thing with this style is to turn fairly thin,with even
wall thickness at 3/8 to 1/4 inch. If it is fairly humid where you are,
just setting on a shelf, out of sun and wind, will work. You can also
brown bag it which creates a stable mini enviroment for the bowl to dry
in. The bowl will warp, and seldom cracks. It can be dry enough to sand
and oil finish in a week to a month. If it still feels cool to the
touch, it needs to dry a bit longer. Fruit woods seem to be way more
prone to splitting if they are thicker than 1/4 inch. Maple seems to be
okay up to 1/2 inch thick.
robo hippy


Well, here's my experience. If you think of what prevents checking - since
checks become splits - a moisture gradient which keeps the surface almost as
wet (dry) as the interior, thin is great for all woods. Only ones I've had
problems with, depending on the slope of the walls, have been woods with
built-in cleavage plates - medullary rays - like oak and beech. Of fruit
woods, I've only turned cherry and apple.

Two other good things about thin are the fact that you can throw almost all
the unbound moisture by centrifugal force, and the wood has less substance
to pull against and distort.

As to dry times, it depends on the relative humidity. Consider that a plank
will lose or gain about one percent per week according to the FPL, and then
remember that water migrates 10-15 times as fast from end grain as from the
face, and you'd really have to have some strange circumstances to have a
bowl which took more than two weeks to EMC at less than a half inch thick.