Green wood and Soap

Well I have started turning some larger green wood and ran into the same problem as everyone else. It shifts and cracks. In searching web site and all over the web I found using a 50/50 of dish soap and water was the way to treat the wood . One site said soaking for as little as 4 hours was working for him. Others said weeks. So I tried it for the first time yesterday. I put the wood in yesterday and took it out this morning, washed it off , and left it on the racks to dry.

Now about 6 hours later I went out to check on it and most of the bowls cracked already. I think this is telling me they need to soak longer than one day. This was some cherry I had won at the club raffle, it was sealed on the ends so it seemed to be OK after the rough turning.

Set out on the table to dry for a few days now. 

Sometimes I wonder if the cracks are too big to fill. Just starting so I am still experimenting with what will work and what is firewood.

For the cracks I use epoxy as a filler.

I soak the bowl and dry them. Then I fill the cracks. After turning the bowls they may need a little more filler and I do this right on the lathe. Then I blew the rim and had to cut down the size. At the bottom of the series is the final bowl. I can't say that this project was worthwhile. A lot of messing around filling, turning, filling again, and other problems. I think next time unless it is a very special piece of wood it will turn into firewood with that many cracks to start.

These are some that have been a little more successful.

I do end up with some small cracks that did not get filled, these are on the bowl on the left in the above picture.

Another batch of bowls getting rough turned. I normally just split a log and then turn all the bowls at once. After putting that group in the soap I will start on another log.

This is one batch that was just taken out , washed, and drying. I normally just rough bowls until the soap tub is full.

And now a new batch of 13 bowls so far into the soap. I may add some more, the tub is not real full yet.