Twice-Turned and Boiled Madrone Bowl

[Russell Neyman]

Madrone is a species of wood unique to the Pacific Northwest, and for those of us who have it readily available -- I certainy do -- it's wonderful to work with. It's dense, durable, and can have a wonderful red color. The burls, especially, are in demand, although the project here is a simple straight grain. But madrone does present some challenges. I thought I share today's adventure.

First of all, this wood almost always grows in a leaning orientation. That is, the trunk grows under compression, scrunching the growth rings together on one side, and when the wood cures it wants to spring back, warp, and crack. Not good.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to deal with this tendency is to rough turn the bowl to a general shape, then boil and dry the blank, setting it in a cool place for a good period of time. The project you see here was from a tree felled about a year ago. I cut it round on my bandsaw, mounted it on the lathe, turned it to about an inch thick. then boiled it in water for several hours. I choose not to coat it with wax (I usually do) and simply set it aside in a corner of the shop to dry out.

Twice Turned Madrone 1.jpg Twice Turned Madrone 1a.jpg
After 12 months, this is what it looked like. Yes, that's a moldy crust that has formed on many of the surfaces. I eliminated that by occasionally spraying the blank with household bleach.

This week I took the blank down and checked the moisture level: 12 percent, which is just about right. It was slightly oval, but no cracks. So the first task at hand was to clean up the tenon and area around the tenon so that I could re-chuck it and turn a finished bowl.

Twice Turned Madrone 3.jpg

(Sorry some of these photos are sideways. SMC turns them automatically sometimes and I haven't figured out how to keep that from happening.)

I mounted the rough bowl in my Cole jaws, engaged the tailstock, and trued up the tenon, also taking time to smooth up the bottom of the bowl near the tenon and create an eventual base ridge. With that done, I can mount the bowl onto a four-jaw chuck. I choose to do this before I remove it from the Cole jaws because it stays truer to the headstock.
Twice Turned Madrone 4.jpg

Note: This is a process I noted in my "Nifty Shop Tips" thread. I follow this almost every time I'm converting a bowl from one mount (eg, faceplate) to a final four-jaw chuck. With the blank firmly mounted, I can switch it around and begin to shape the bowl.

Twice Turned Madrone 5.jpg Twice Turned Madrone 6.jpg

A degree of problem solving was made at this point, and the basic design chosen. The first thing I needed to do was get the darn thing balanced because it had a slight vibration. I initially rough-turned the outside, then completed the inside shape with scrapers. Returning to the outside again, I added three beads at the top of the rim. There was a bit of minor tearout at the waist that, after trying various tooling methods, I finally sanded away.

After sanding everything to 220, I applied a coat of lacquer sanding sealer, which will serve as a basecoat for the eventual satin lacquer. Here's what it looks like now, still mounted in the chuck, ready for final sanding and multiple coats of clear lacquer.

Twice Turned Madrone 8.jpg Twice Turned Madrone 9.jpg

It measures a full 10 inches across and 8 inches tall, with a wall thickness of 3/8ths of an inch. I plan to color the beads with lacquer, too, probably a green or black. I still need to reverse mount it and turn off the tenon, so there's a bit more to go.

[daryl moses]

Great write up and tutorial, thanks for taking the time to write it.
Your bowl is looking good, love the beading and looking forward to seeing the finished piece.

[John K Jordan]

Great and interesting post, good photos, thanks!

Have you ever tried boiling Madrone?

I bought some incredibly beautiful figured large Madrone turning squares from Pete Keckle (Big Monk Lumber). It's "exotic" imported wood in this part of the country! I almost didn't buy them because of Madrone's reputation for being unstable. Then Pete told me no problem, they were boiled, so I bought a box full.

Boiling used to be quite common for managing wood that tends to warp badly and crack but I don't hear of anyone doing it these days. The late Jim King from Peru who exported thousands of bowls made from some of the most unstable wood you can imagine said they ALWAYS boiled roughed bowls - in 55 gallon drums over a wood fire. I got a big block of rare Pink Flame from Jim and he warned me not to even think about turning it without boiling!

Noted turner Stephen Russell wrote this excellent article on boiling green wood (with specific instructions for Madrone): http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com...reen-wood.html (Back up and browse some of Stephen's other articles - excellent!)

A common method at one time was to boil bowl blanks in a turkey fryer over propane heat. The only caution I've heard was the severe hazard of boiling a bowl whose diameter nearly matched the inside of the container - it is possible for the wood to swell and seal against the inside. It reportedly can build up pressure and cause the tank to rupture!

JKJ

[Ralph Lindberg]

Some thoughts on "boiling"
*Generally when we say "boiling" we don't mean at a full "rolling boil", but rather simply boiling. That is to say bubbles and steam.
*Generally wood fibers start "relaxing" about 180(f) and are usually well into their "plastic" mode at 190(F). So water at 210 to 212(F) should be causing the wood to well into that mode.
*Steve (and others) generally note the 1 hr per inch. I bump that a little when I am boiling pepper-grinders and usually run them about 4 hours. But a bowl 1-inch thick (25mm) is just a bit over an hour.
*One place I see some divergence of opinion is cool-down. Some pull the wood and let it cool down in air (this allows you to put the next items in the hot water), others let the water cool, then pull the wood out. The later is what I do.
*One thing I checked on is yes, (using the in-water cool down) the boiled wood does gain some weight, but it looses that extra water very quickly.
*One thing I haven't checked is if a boiled piece drys faster then an unboiled. That's on my "to-do" list, but so is so much else... Personally I think it does, but I have done no trails to prove that.

PS, I really miss hearing from Steve, I used to enjoy the Wed night web-chat's he moderated and the monthly mass e-mails he used to send out on new thoughts, ideas and things he is trying. It's actually been some years since I heard anything from or about him. I think the last was when he was leading an effort to start a turning club just for disabled turners.

[Russell Neyman]

*I see some divergence of opinion is cool-down. Some pull the wood and let it cool down in air, others let the water cool, then pull the wood out.
*I haven't checked is if a boiled piece drys faster then an unboiled. That's on my "to-do" list, but so is so much else... Personally I think it does, but I have done no trials to prove that.

Ralph, et al, I did a test with this same batch of madrone, rough-turning two similar blanks and checking the weight loss on one that was boiled and one not. Yes, the boiled wood lost weight significantly faster. The un-boiled one had significantly more warping and cracking, too. That isn't a very large sampling, but I'm convinced that it enhances the drying process.

I am also one of those who leaves the blank IN the water to cool. Common sense tells me that a gradual change of temperature will stress the wood less, exacty the same way rapid drying stresses tree rounds. I've noted the a similar thing with microwaving wood, too; a bit of a lighter hand with the heat leads to fewer headaches.

[John K Jordan]

Have you ever tried boiling Madrone?

Yikes, I just noticed the thread title said "and boiled"! Sorry, don't know how I missed that! I plead elderly/feeblemindedness.

JKJ

[John K Jordan]

PS, I really miss hearing from Steve, I used to enjoy the Wed night web-chat's he moderated and the monthly mass e-mails he used to send out on new thoughts, ideas and things he is trying. It's actually been some years since I heard anything from or about him. I think the last was when he was leading an effort to start a turning club just for disabled turners.

Ralph, I miss communicating and hearing from him too. A year or so I started asking around, worried if he was ok, and eventually found he was active in a club in Texas. I found recent photos of him doing a demo. I love reading through he writings - there is a broad wealth of knowledge there for the questing mind.

JKJ

[Russell Neyman]

I'll be posting a series of photographs on the topic of re-shaping warped bowls with steam in a few days, but it seems to me that process has the potential to "relax" grain stresses that lead to cracking, too.

[Reed Gray]

A round madrone bowl just looks wrong to me because it is round.... It is a wonderful wood to turn, and my favorite, and the more they warp, the better they sell for me. I don't boil in part because of the extra time involved, and in part because it muddles the colors a bit. There was one local turner who also steamed his madrone hollow forms. It works as well, but I think it takes more time. I have found out that I can burn lines in wet madrone (it holds more water than just about any other wood). A piece of laminate/formica, some good pressure, and let it spin. On a once turned bowl, the lines go all squiggly... For once turned bowls, it is best to get trees when the spring sap is in full run. Later harvest seems to crack more. Turning to 1/4 inch or less is best. 3/8 inch is pretty much impossible to dry without cracking. I left some in my soap barrel (1/2 soap, 1/2 water to make sanding easier) for over a year, and they still warped and a couple cracked. You have to be kind of peculiar to work this wood. In the woods, it is considered a trash tree because it is so difficult to turn into lumber, so most of the time it goes to flooring, or in the firewood/chip pile. I have some lumber, but it seems that solar kiln or vacuum kiln is the only way to go.

robo hippy

[Jeffrey J Smith]

In the woods, it is considered a trash tree because it is so difficult to turn into lumber, so most of the time it goes to flooring, or in the firewood/chip pile. I have some lumber, but it seems that solar kiln or vacuum kiln is the only way to go.robo hippy

Reed - I, too, love to turn madrone. Next time you're up this way, take a trip to Whidbey Island and spend a night at the Capt. Whidbey Inn - a 1906 (?) lodge built entirely of local madrone. Good food, nice little bar, interesting accommodations - enjoy a trip down the hall to the sanitary facilities...just don't get the room over the bar. I wouldn't have thought they could find enough straight pieces to build a log lodge. www.captainwhidbey.com

[Russell Neyman]

I can burn lines in wet madrone (it holds more water than just about any other wood). A piece of laminate/formica, some good pressure, and let it spin. On a once turned bowl, the lines go all squiggly... robo hippy

Exactly!! I'm sure there are Midwesterners who have never seen madrone, much less worked with it, whose jaws would drop at the degree of squiggly-ness and surface texturing that occurs with this stuff. I love that effect, especially on hollow forms. You've got to move quickly, though, and take care with thicknesses to avoid cracking.

I have a friend who deals in exotic woods who says he can pretty much count on losing half of his madrone blanks due to cracking, and the only way he knows to deal with it is boiling. So if you get a bunch of it that's fresh, and you don't have time to process it immediately -- as was the case here -- this is the way to go.

By the way, Reed, I did an experiment a couple of years back that involving the loss of color in boiled wood that gave good results. I took the dark purple water left from the boiling process, cooked it until it reduced to a thick sauce, then re-coated the finished bowl as you would a commercial stain.

[Reed Gray]

I took both madrone and myrtle blanks back to the Symposium in KC. The myrtle sold out first, but many had at least heard about it. One guy took some that 'boiled everything', and I told the others how to handle it. I just stretch filmed the outsides, and they did fine in a crate for 2 weeks.

I did hear of one other method for drawing out the color from a spoon carver (from Ohio, but now in Eugene, and madrone is his favorite wood for spoon carving since I gave him some...). He boils a potato and then coats the outside of the spoon with the starch water. He said it draws out the color, and helps prevent cracking when he puts it on the radiator over night to dry....

That Captain Whidbey Inn sounds like a must see...... I don't take vacations often...

robo hippy

[Russell Neyman]

I did hear of one other method for drawing out the color from a spoon carver (from Ohio, but now in Eugene, and madrone is his favorite wood for spoon carving since I gave him some...). He boils a potato and then coats the outside of the spoon with the starch water. He said it draws out the color, and helps prevent cracking when he puts it on the radiator over night to dry....robo hippy

Draws out the color? I don't understand. You mean he wants​ to remove that deep red? Or enhance it?

[Reed Gray]

Oh, I meant it brings out the red. Some of it can be pretty pale, but the soap soak for sure brings out the red, at least more than there was before it goes into the soap. It leaves a nice red/purple color to the soap bath. I had never heard about the potato water wash though. No idea what makes it work.

robo hippy