This probably is a silly question but ….
We’ve been having some really unseasonably cold weather around the PNW. Like freezing several nights in a row. I’ve got a whole pallet of turning blanks sitting outside the house that came from a tree that was growing a few weeks ago. The stuff is really full of water. I roughed out a largish piece this evening and almost had to wring my shirt out when I got done.
What’s the effect of water freezing internally in the wood? Intuition would suggest that the wood fibers are resilient enough to take the expansion of ice crystals if they form inside and the worst that might happen is the crystals melt back into water/sap when the wood warms up. Anything else?
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Where I live I've never met a piece of wood that hasn't been frozen at least once, and you guessed right, the resilience of the wood cells can usually handle it with no problem.
Really wet wood will crack from the expansion of the ice in extreme cold say -40 but if it gets that cold you may want those blanks in the stove anyway!
P.S. Old loggers say "It aint cold till you hear the poplars pop"
I know that you will get dryer wood the longer and colder it is. "Freeze Dried" as it were.
Mitt
Wish that were true Mitt,
I live in Minnesota, maybe you've heard of it? At night when they report the weather the cold spot in the nation always seems to be my state. 40 below seems to be the norm for january...:-(
Anyway I dried my white oak timbers for 4 years and when I was cutting them this year to build my timberframe, I had to stand to one side or the water flowing off the blade would drown me, Wood pretty much doesn't dry during the winter!
Dennis, my friend Ron came over and picked up a couple of the trunk pieces of juniper today, to do some carving. He mentioned that when a piece is "in progress" and he doesn't want it to start drying out and cracking, he puts it in the freezer.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
> ....he doesn't want it to start drying out and cracking, he puts it in the freezer.
One can't argue with success, of course. But that doesn't stand to reason if it's a frost free freezer. Ever take the ice cube tray out after several weeks without checking them? (grin).
Can you say "Freezer Burn"?
hehehe....
I've got several pieces roughed out from the lathe that I keep in plastic bags. I take them out every day or so to give them a breath of fresh air and let a little moisture escape. If I don't finish something on the lathe by noise curfew time I leave it in the chuck and wrap a plastic bag around it, too.
But like I say, if it works for your bud, then who can argue with it?? (hehe)
...........
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
He uses the baggie method too. As far as the freezer goes, I doubt he ever goes more than a day without working on the next stage. He's not one to let things sit around! Wish I were more like that. Then again, he spent many months working for one of those big (b-i-g) theater production companies where all that "stuff" (furniture, carriages, whatever -- the range was amazing) had to be built yesterday, from scratch.
I'll go over to the Juniper thread and see what you decided about that. Later!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
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