Once-turning green wood

UKworkshop.co.uk

Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Chris152

Established Member
Joined
26 Apr 2017
Messages
2,560
Reaction score
269
Location
Cardiff
Which woods turned thin do you find/ think are most stable for this? Some movement's good, but I'm not looking for extreme wobbling or splitting.
Thanks, C
 
The most stable green wood that I’ve turned is yew. Apart from that it’s a pig to work with because of its toxicity. Despite nitrile gloves, positive air pressure helmet, dust extraction, and air filtration my body knows about it for several days afterwards.

One thing you could try is turning a bowl with a foot rather than a recess to hold the reverse chuck. It’s easier to re-level a protruding foot than it is to re-level a bowl bottom.
 
Roland":1ijk02rd said:
The most stable green wood that I’ve turned is yew. Apart from that it’s a pig to work with because of its toxicity. Despite nitrile gloves, positive air pressure helmet, dust extraction, and air filtration my body knows about it for several days afterwards.

Wood's weird, isn't it? I've never had that problem myself but I imagine it's very similar to the whole Rosewood or Iroko reactions people get. I always wear a mask with Yew anyway (Most of the time), but there's definitely a unique smell that hangs around for a while.
 
I've managed to avoid turning yew so far - I've read too many stories. I get reactions to some things which is a shame, it's a beautiful wood. Not quite beautiful enough or me to give it a go tho.
 
I found this on a site called 'Hunker':

'Trees within a species can vary greatly depending on an individual tree's age, growth rate, stress and the conditions of the growing site. In spite of that, some species are known for being particularly resistant to warping.'
Apart from the softwoods listed, it goes on to say:
'Other woods that are resistant to warping include cherry, walnut and yellow poplar.'

It's clear that when thinking of boards, quarter sawn seems less likely to warp, but that's not much help when turning bowls that'll probably include other than quarter sawn.

Any other suggestions?
 
If you are looking for little distortion when turning green timber it comes down to how you convert the wood to get the blank. If you turn it parallel grain with the centre of the log on lathe axis you will get little distortion provided the growth rings are nice and round and there's little variation in the grain along the length i.e. not knots branches etc.
 
Thanks Mark - I was thinking to turn bowls, across the grain (not into end grain) if I'm using the terms correctly.
 
Chris152":1050j0fp said:
Thanks Mark - I was thinking to turn bowls, across the grain (not into end grain) if I'm using the terms correctly.
If that is the case then you are going to get some distoration because of how wood fibres dry and which again will depend on how you convert the log, how wet it is and what variation in the grain there is.
 
That's great - thanks. I recently second-turned turned eucalyptus, renowned for distorting and sure enough, it did that! It was pretty wild and ended up in the bin. I then turned damson which distorted far less, and which left a beautiful wavy rim that I kept.

So I'm now looking for more consistent grain/ direction (as per your advice), but also for woods that aren't generally inclined to split/ warp excessively, to once turn.
 
Back
Top