It's been two days since there was a post to this board, that's sad. Maybe all the questions have been answered and we've reached "the end of the internet".

But, I'm hoping someone out there is turning something, and if so, they should post some pictures of it, so the rest of us have something to look at. I post these two not because they are at all remarkable, they're just the last two things to emerge from the shop. Spring is slowly coming even here in northern MN, and there are outdoor chores that are cutting into my shop time.

Two spheres, one black ash burl and one apple, both found wood, both about 3.25" in diameter. Rather than cutting blanks and waiting for them to dry, I've taken to commonly roughing out spheres from green wood, then coating with anchorseal and letting them dry in a paper bag. I've found that the wood dries much faster this way than if left in spindle blank form, and I think it's less prone to cracking, especially in the 3"-ish range I like to use for spheres. Both of these were handled that way. It's highly dependent on the nature of the wood, and how wet it is, but I've found that a 3" sphere from many woods will dry to a stable weight (i.e., dry enough to final turn and finish) in 3-4 months in a heated shop. Dense tropicals go a little slower, and I put two coats of anchorseal on those because generally speaking dense woods seem more prone to drying cracks than less dense, at least that's been my observation. I think spheres dry quickly in large part because their relatively small radius means that most all of the wood is pretty close to end grain. In larger radius bowls, there are larger (longer) portions where the wood is all flat/side grain. That's my theory anyway. It's not intuitively obvious that a 3" thick sphere should dry faster than a 10" green turned bowl with 1" walls, but I think they do.

So I did my part, now someone else please post what you're working on.

Best,

Dave

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