Alcohol soaking to dry large slab?

[Perry Holbrook]

This may be a crazy idea. Yesterday I lucked into a 150 year old Walnut tree that had been cut down for firewood and managed purchase it at a per truck load price. The trunk piece is almost 4 ft dia and 8 ft long before a 3 piece crotch that is 5 ft across. Huge tree, and solid. A couple of professional turners are going to take the largest pieces and I'll take a couple of loads of the stuff less than 24". (Sorry no pictures, not intended to be a gloat).

Anyway, in addition to turning blanks, I think I'll take some cross cut slabs in the 24" to 18" dia to make into table tops, stool tops, etc. So I need to decide how to dry them with the least chance for cracks and checks. I'll probably cut them 2" to 3" and maybe 4" thick and since they are 100% end grain, drying without defects will be a challenge. If I coat them with Anchorseal, it will take forever to dry and of course I have project ideas that can't wait.

So it occured to me that maybe alcohol soaking would be a possibility. Or, maybe boiling in water.
Or, maybe you've got the perfect solution.

What do you think?

Perry

PS One other thing to consider, the wood is so wet that water was actually running out of the end grain after the chainsaw cut, if that makes any difference.

[Jim Becker]

Unless you band them with metal...they're going to crack big-time as they shrink. I doubt that disbursing moisture with the alcohol is going to make much difference at all. It works well in turning because the walls are at an even thickness and the rough turnings don't have the radial stresses that an end-grain slab have out from the pith.

[Alan Schwabacher]

In Hoadley's "Understanding Wood" he describes how he thought disks of wood cross cut from a trunk looked cool and wanted to collect them. They always cracked. Soaking them in various stuff did not prevent it, not even PEG, which stabilizes wood and can avoid other problems.

[Wes Grass]

Banding them won't even help. It shrinks more tangentially than radially. The wood simply goes away and voids open up.

Maybe split them into quarters or eighths, and then trim and glue them back together after drying. Cover them completely with cheap interior latex paint to slow the drying. Much cheaper than commercial sealants. Plan on waiting a couple years.

And while you're at it, get a few flat and quarter sawn slabs for other projects you haven't thought of yet.

[Richard Wolf]

I think the best way to deal with them, is to let them split. After they have dried, repair the pie shaped split with a slice from another slab.

Richard

[Mark Versprille]

Alcohol is hydroscopic, it draws moisture to itself so that doesn't sound like a plan. A leather worker friend iron banded a 24" long by 18" diameter maple log for a , I guess you'd call it a leather anvil, with four 1 1/2" bands. It had some cracks that he filled with glue and saw dust. It still looked really cool in his shop.

[Julian Nicks]

Wow, I would NOT waste that walnut by cutting discs out of it. Get that sucker to a mill and make some lumber out of it! That's what you use make a slab table.

[Rick Lizek]

http://www.preservation-solutions.co...yword=Pentacry
Use Pentacryl...

[Chris Gombola]

My ignorance will show here. I know of a drum company that takes desert iron wood slabs and turns them into drum shells (basically hollow forms). I imagine they do the initial turning when they're green and slowly allow them to dry before the final finish. What allows these shells to survive so well?