Woodworker's Journal 1994-18-5, страница 12

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Readers Ask

Turning Green Wood

1 have been trying to read between the lines about turning green wood. Roger Holmes wrote in your child's Windsor chair article (Sept./Oct. 1992) that spindles dry quickly and the process can be speeded up by placing them in a bucket of heated sand. If I start turning a friendly neighbor's wood pile into spindles, what do I need to know about drying green spindles?

David Eberte, 'Mienapte, Pa.

Roger Holmes' reply:

First, a bit of terminology. I call the thin uprights in the chair back spindles, and the heftier horizontal pieccs that tie the legs together, stretcher;. The spindles are so thin that they are usually dry by the time I'm ready to assemble the chair.

Stretchers, which 1 turn after the legs have been socketed into the seat, may need a little help in order to dry enough for assembly. To do this, 1 fill a JO-12" kitchen saucepan (that's roughly the same depth) with sand and heat it on a hotplate. Then. I plunge the tenoned ends of the stretchers an inch or so beyond the shoulders into the hot sand.

How fast the tenons dry depends on how hot the sand is. If the sand is too hot. it may char the wood, and if too cool, the process takes a long time. N oli may have to fiddle around a bit until you find the heat setting that makes the sand just right. My sand doesn't heat evenly, so I give the spindles an occasional tum. Also, the finer the sand, the better. You might be able to buy some from a store that sells eyeglasses if they still use hot sand to heat the temples.

You need to dry just the tenoned ends of the stretchers. I prefer an H-pattem for the stretchers, with the center stretcher tenoned into bulges in the two side stretchers. For that construction, you want the mortised "bulge¹' to be wetter than the stretcher so that it will shrink around the tenon and tighten the joint. Because the seat stock is dry. this doesn't apply to the spindle tenons and seat mortises. 1 usually make the spindle tenons oversized, and then let them dry. Finally. 1 remount them on the lathe, and turn them for a snug fit in the mortises. ESi

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