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Chipman
26th January 2009, 10:24 PM
Hi,

With a week of really hot weather coming up here in Melbourne, what are you doing to protect your blanks?. I have mine painted but some are splitting anyway.... on a 40 deg day, it is more like 50 in the shed.

This afternoon, I put most of mine in plastic bags and put them under low green leafy bushes in the garden... should be a little cooler and more humid there.


More questions...

What is the best way to stop the mould growing on silver birch? If I try that methylated spirits drying technique, would that kill the mould?


What does liquid amber turn like?


Stay cool if you can,

Chipman

steck
27th January 2009, 08:13 AM
Hi,

With a week of really hot weather coming up here in Melbourne, what are you doing to protect your blanks?. I have mine painted but some are splitting anyway.... on a 40 deg day, it is more like 50 in the shed.

Hi,
I reckon the best way to protect my turning blanks has been to dip them in melted beeswax. I use an old electric frypan for this. I have tried the paint trick and it seems to work for a short while only. Then it usually splits.
Fungishield isn't bad but you have to re-aaply it and it doesn't always work.


What is the best way to stop the mould growing on silver birch? If I try that methylated spirits drying technique, would that kill the mould?
I use the Metho bath after I have rough turned the wood into a bowl. I haven't heard of it being used on a blank. I have a Peppercorn Tree burl which was covered with blue stain mould so I painted it with White King. It got rid of the mould on the outside but I haven't turned it yet so I can't say whether it worked inside the timber.

What does liquid amber turn like? Here is a thread on Liquidamber http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=47008

rsser
27th January 2009, 10:48 AM
Chipman, plakky and shade will reduce checking but speed up the spread of bluestain. Not all timber species are prone to it; various 'pines' are. There doesn't seem to be much you can do about it anyway as the fungal spores are said to be in the wood. But with Silver Birch I'd suggest you remove all sapwood and otherwise, as posted, rough turning followed by controlled drying is a good way to go.

robutacion
27th January 2009, 12:44 PM
Hi,

With a week of really hot weather coming up here in Melbourne, what are you doing to protect your blanks?. I have mine painted but some are splitting anyway.... on a 40 deg day, it is more like 50 in the shed.

This afternoon, I put most of mine in plastic bags and put them under low green leafy bushes in the garden... should be a little cooler and more humid there.


More questions...

What is the best way to stop the mould growing on silver birch? If I try that methylated spirits drying technique, would that kill the mould?


What does liquid amber turn like?


Stay cool if you can,

Chipman

Hi Chipman,

If you only have a small number of blanks to worry about, and your shed gets as hot as a "furness" (up to 55 - 60 degrees) in hot days, the best thing to do is take them home, put them under the bed, in a spare room, anywhere out of the way until the weather cool down. For most of us, the only livable place on these sort of temperatures is in the house with the air-con on full board. If you got a reasonable amount of timber that will be expose to extreme heat, the simpler and most cost effective way to protect it, is to get your garden hose and a good sprinkler going on and off at intervals no longer then 2 hours (without water). You can obviously do this by hand with the hose, at least 3 times a day. The idea is to keep the timber wet (soaked) even if green, while the temperatures are very hight. Is important to keep them in the shade or covered with something (preferentially not plastic) and not totally enclosed, some air is needed to flow through.

Every year, about this time, I lose a considerable number of blanks and other timbers, due to extreme heat, mainly on 2 low sheds (7' or less ) with shelfs built right to the top. I normally remove the blanks out of the top shelf before it gets too hot, but still, it "cooks" the timbers to quickly and they just split in 2 or more places right through the middle of the blanks.
Last year, I decide to protect a large batch of green blanks (about 300) I had cut just before the weather got unbearably hot (even up here in the hills), buy soaking them overnight in soaping solution. I got 2 of those blue plastic 200 litre drums and using a mix of 10 to 1, I've filled both drums up every day with blanks about 10 to 12 each drum with about 100 litres of liquid mixed soap and water. Every 24 hours I would replace the soaked blanks with the ones never soaked and top up the mix with 50% of the mixed solution as the other 50% were soaked by the blanks. For a solid week we, my wife and I, we got up every day about 3 am to get the job done before the sun would come up. Did it work? considering the options and the expected results if we haven't done it, yes, we saved 80% of the blanks. We could have done a little better is the storage sheds were higher or insulated, no doubt but, I had some very old and very dry blanks that I had prepared a few months earlier, and some of then just didn't survived to the conditions, developing large and deep cracks right in the middle.

I am not absolutely sure if the wax has stronger capabilities to protect the blanks or logs from cracking, then a reasonable acrylic paint has. I have some timber painted with some of the best weather resistant paint, and from where I can see in some blanks, I doubt anything would stop that piece of timber not to slip in two, unless you would rap the blank in wire, very tight, even then I doubt that the timber wouldn't split as soon as the wires would be removed. Some particular timber species, just have a mind on their own, they do what they want, and you can only watch or turn your back away...! :o

This year, and with a forecast for a week (next few days) of "extreme" heat, I don't have the energy and or the will to touch anything in the sheds. Most of what has been cut green these last few months, is stored in a bit of an extension in between the sheds, same hight but with timbers stacked on pallets and a little further away from the roof. Still, need something but, the only thing I will do is to get the water hose and wet the stack once a day before it gets too hot. This area was built for this purpose, and the pallets will keep the timber off the ground, any excess water runs down to the garden bellow :D.

For all the timber stored in the open paddock, I hope that the shade from the large gums planted near the area where I have the timber, will give some protection to them, will see...!

Good luck with keeping your timbers from cracking from the heat, everyone!

Cheers:2tsup:
RBTCO

Ad de Crom
27th January 2009, 03:19 PM
My experience with green silverbirch is to turn it roughly into the shape you want, and put it in a paper bag for a couple of weeks.
Ad

Chipman
27th January 2009, 04:47 PM
Thanks for all the advice...if only we could do something about the weather:oo:

I wasn't planing on putting the blanks into the methylated spirits...rough turn the bowl first.

Cheers,

Chipman

rsser
28th January 2009, 01:14 PM
Chipman, I took a look at Bootle Wood in Australia, to check my understanding of bluestain.

So the spores are everywhere he says, and the best way to avoid it is rapid blocking down and drying, with fungicide treatment as soon as it is blocked. His recipe is 4% weight-weight of sodium pentachlorphenate and 12% w-w of borax dissolved in water. Cover the timber to avoid leaching of the solution.

Once timber is below 20% there should be no fungal attack producing bluestain.

FWIW, my first boot load of Silver Birch suffered no bluestain with no precautions taken. A later set of lumps did.