Cottonwood

[Randy Dear]

I am brand new to woodturning, i fact my Jet 1236 should be in Thursday. Today I happened to see a pile of cut down brush, I contacted the owner and was invited to take as much as I want. The owner told me the 10" X 18"-20" pieces were Cottonwood. I wanted to know if this was a usable piece of wood and how should I prepare the pieces if so?

[Robert McGowen]

No clue, as I have never turned any, but I did get this off of the internet.

"Felling a cottonwood tree usually involves making an initial deep chainsaw cut to drain the water.
Cottonwood bark is often a favorite medium for artisans. The bark, which is usually harvested in the fall after a tree's death, is generally very soft and easy to carve.
Cottonwood is one of the poorest woods to use as wood fuel. It does not dry well, and rots quickly. It splits poorly, because it is very fibrous."

Sounds like practice wood at best. Good luck!

[Patrick Taylor]

Nothing wrong with practice wood!

[Chris Rolke]

cottonwood is very nice

this is one of my favorite pieces

[Allen Neighbors]

I contacted the owner and was invited to take as much as I want. The owner told me the 10" X 18"-20" pieces were Cottonwood. I wanted to know if this was a usable piece of wood and how should I prepare the pieces if so?

Randy, this is my first post on Sawmill Creek. You should get as much of it as you can. Cut it into useable sized blanks, and seal the end grain, and store in a shady, fairly cool spot. Then start turning it as much as you can.
Rough turn it to about 1" thickness, and coat the whole piece in Anchorseal or paraffin wax. I live in hot country. I store my blanks, sealed, in an old refrigerator that I've drilled holes in bottom and top to allow air to move through. Keeps them from drying out too fast. I store rough turnings in another "holey" refrigerator that I've added a 40w light and fan to.
Cottonwood is very soft... you can mark it easily with a fingernail. It turns very easily, but if you turn with dull tools you'll get a lot of tearout. Tearout can be taken care of by a coat of wax or lacquer wash and then taking very light final cuts. The wood sands easily, but grain raises with wet finish... Some of it is beautiful wood. The first bowl I ever sold was a 10" dia Cottonwood, and it went for $50.
When finished, Cottonwood pieces are very light.
Hope this helps a little.
Have fun, and enjoy your new lathe...

[Bernie Weishapl]

Randy there is not a thing wrong with Cottonwood. It turns pretty nice, yes you will have some tear out but if your tools are sharp and honed no problem. Curt Fuller on here got me started on it. I hope he will hop in here and give you some of his advice. I think Curt is the one who told me to cut cottonwood after it has died just when the bark starts to fall off the tree.

[Curt Fuller]

I like cottonwood when it's dry. The crotch wood almost always has some nice curl and chatoyance in it. But when wet and green it's sloppy, stringy, miserable stuff to work with and it smells like a barnyard on a wet spring day. If you have green wood I'd suggest you just rough turn some things, let them dry out for a few months, and then it should turn pretty nice when you finish turn it.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=43950

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=39059

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=39109

[Gary Garmar]

Interesting thread!! I have located a VERY LARGE Cottonwood - approx. 5ft in diameter and it has Burl around most of its trunk and on several branches. I have permission to take it down but can't bring myself to destroy such a huge tree. If it should start to die then I'm all over it. Good to know its a good species to turn.

[Chris Barton]

I like dry cotton wood but, like Curt, I find green cotton wood to be too soft and stringy for turning. In the immortal words of John Jordan, "life is too short to turn bad wood."

[Robert McGowen]

So far, I count "3 yes", "3 no", and 2 "I don't know" for turning green cottonwood. Looks like you can take your choice depending on what you want to do!
Anyone want to suggest how Randy should dry it. DNA, soap, bags, just let it sit, etc, etc., etc., etc.?
Then we could give him a lot more choices!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Robert my neighbor turns a lot of it and he uses 50/50 LDD (Liquid Dishwashing Detergent) and water. He has had excellent results with it. So much so I am going to give it a go.

[Allen Neighbors]

Well, this is my second post on SMC.
I've worked with wood since I was a teenager, but I've only been turning since 2004. I've been curing my own wood for about 15 years (before turning, it was bandsaw boxes).
A friend told me this was an awesome forum, so I decided to join in today.
The LDD post brought this up. I've used Ivory concentrated dish washing detergent 50/50 with water for about 2 years. Kept fairly decent records.. nothing scientific... but recording the size of the rough, type wood, date in the soup, date out of the soup, and if it cracked or not, and how I dried it.
Bear in mind, that I live in hot, dry, NW Texas, my shop has open eaves, and a swamp cooler... no good place for rough drying. My best way is to keep it submerged in the soup for at least a month. Take it out and let it drip a while, then put it into the refrigerator/kiln gizmo I mentioned above.
Paper bagging, with or without chips, gave me more cracks and warping than the kiln. With this method, I have little cracking.
I turn on the light for about 8 hours a day for a week, then turn the fan on with the light (same 8 or so hours) for another week. Then just the fan for a week, and they are pretty well dry.
I've read some awesome posts, saw some beautiful work, and got some good information from this forum... thanks to all of you.
Allen
Hot and finally dry in Childress.

[Richard Madison]

Allen,
Welcome to this forum! Sounds like you have some experience and expertise that could be seriously helpful to others. Still raining in Wimberley, and 4-5 more days of same predicted. Good excuse for spending all that time in the shop, and/but need to get some outdoor work done too. Best regards and welcome.

[Barry Stratton]

In the immortal words of John Jordan, "life is too short to turn bad wood."

Sweet!!! I never knew Michael Jordan's father was a turner.

Free wood is the best wood. Worst case is its practice stuff, best case is you get some nice turnings out of the deal.

[Randy Dear]

Thank you for all your responses, I will work on it and let you know how it turns out in the future