Kiln drying

delaney001

Hi.
Friend makes hurleys for a living. He has a kiln that I can use if I want. I have a load of ash to dry for bowl turning.
He runs the kiln @ 25*C for roughly 10 days at a time, bringing the moisture of his hurls down to 16%.
Would this work for me or would it be drying too fast? What kind of moisture % is suitable for woodturning?

magicbastarder

my concern (based on speculation rather than experience) is that the wood he's drying may be more thinly split, and possibly quartersawn, than the blanks you want to turn for bowls. so he'd have less problem with splitting and thus may run the kiln at a higher temperature than suits you.

i've been turning a load of beech recently given to me by my father in law - but i reckon it was felled more than a few months ago, so there's plenty of checks in it. i'll be lucky if i get a 50% hit rate from the roughed out bowls, i suspect.

delaney001

magicbastarder wrote: »

my concern (based on speculation rather than experience) is that the wood he's drying may be more thinly split, and possibly quartersawn, than the blanks you want to turn for bowls. so he'd have less problem with splitting and thus may run the kiln at a higher temperature than suits you.

i've been turning a load of beech recently given to me by my father in law - but i reckon it was felled more than a few months ago, so there's plenty of checks in it. i'll be lucky if i get a 50% hit rate from the roughed out bowls, i suspect.

Ya I was thinking the same. I have one bowl rough turned and the end grain painted. So gonna drop it in on his next run and see what it's like.