Thread: The soap solution, hmmmm!

Stryker,

Soap works fine, Ron Kent came up with the idea and used it on very thin Norfolk pine bowls.
It allowed him to turn and finish these bowls in a few weeks.

I have used it and it has worked for me very well. But it works on some timbers far better than others, you will have to experiement on your local species.



http://www.ronkent.com/RKgallery.htm

I used the soap solution for a few years, and I second what Hughie said.
Due to the cost of soap replacement, I have since graduated to just plain water soaking (at the suggestion of some of my Oz friends), changing water every three or four days. It stinks like the mischief, though. I've never been able to find anything cheap that will take the smell away.
I put the finished (soaked) roughouts in my refer kiln, and when I open the door, I'm almost knocked out by the smell. If I ever find something that will solve that problem, I'll post it here.

Al ,
re. the smell , you could try one of those odour neutralising liquids that are available at pet stores .
The really good ones get rid of cat spray smell quite well .

I use one called Nilodor , that worked a treat after a tomcat spent the night in my car .....

Tomcat's can ruin a car, eh?
MJ, what would I do with it? Pour some in the soak barrel? Or spray it on the bowl after it's out of the water?

That they can Al , that they can ,

ruined my day too it did

It is a very powerful product , and three drops saw to the car , after it was washed out of course .

The thing to try might be to shake /spray a bit into the refer kiln ??, and see if that does the trick .

If it doesn't , at least it will clear the air in ya playroom

Originally Posted by OGYT

Tomcat's can ruin a car, eh?
MJ, what would I do with it? Pour some in the soak barrel? Or spray it on the bowl after it's out of the water?

I'd spray it on the bowl. The stuff I have is called Bac to Nature Animal Odour Eliminator. Haven't tried it on stinky bowls but. You could try adding presevative to the water. Like food preservative) No idea where you would get that, but bloke I use to work for used it to stop buckets of graze going mouldy. Any clorine would bleach the wood, wouldn't it?

Use cheapest homebrand dishwashing liquid that you can buy and not a lot and it will work fine Experiment to get your strength right and a bit of nilodour or lavendola for the smell . Play round a bit for what suits you Ron Kent did some magnificent turnings with wet wood and so fine Check his web site to see Just try it and be surprised Cheers Wally

Gee this stuff pops up on a regular basis but never ever mentions any real scientific testing as to it's efficacy. I tried it on a variety of woods for a couple of years alongside rough turned and then dried and re-turned. No difference except the soap treated stuff stunk like hell and didn't like finishes. Certainly you can finish turn the soaped stuff down to a thin wall as you can without the soap. After that the chances of cracking are already reduced anyway and the amount of warping remained the same. Sorry I for one am not a believer and that applies to alcohol soaks and boiling. Steam kilns however do work and are a major factor in the wood drying business. So you just open your wallet a bit wider or accept the fact there is a certain amount of time and patience involved in the process.

When I used the soap soak method, I found that keeping the roughouts in the mix for at least a month worked best for me. I used Ivory Clear Concentrated Dish WashING Soap, and mixed it two to one with water (Two Water/OneSoap) and later ended up with a three to one mixture, because of the "Concentrated". I had less cracking with soap soaking than I did with just rough turning and air drying. Like I said earlier, (during the hijacking ) I changed to H2O because the water's cheaper. Haven't done it long enough to report on it, but so far, so good... no cracking.
There was a semi-sorta-quasi-scientific test done on the soap. The test results said that the soap solids penetrated into the cells of the timber (replacing the sap), and when dried, they didn't collapse as much as an empty cell, which gave it less of the stress that causes timber to crack. Sounded feasible to me, so I didn't do any further research... just soaked the wood.
The lacquer wash I used as sealer wasn't affected by the soap soaking, nor was Danish Oil. As WWWally said, give it a try. Can't lose anything but the price of the soap.