Oak - Just Curious

[david privett]

back to the staining of metals with oak has anyone tried to rust treat metal with the tannins kinda like gun bluing? or does anyone have any further ideas on this?

[John K Jordan]

What is your opinion about turning oak? Am I missing out, or not?

Ned,

I love turning white oak. Red oak is OK to turn but I don't like the look as much. The first bowl I ever turned in my life as a rank beginner was glued up from pieces cut from a kiln dried red oak board. This was on an old tube lathe with cheap Craftsman tools and the experience got me really interested in turning.

I think one bias against oak is some people see it as a utility wood in floors, furniture, and cabinets everywhere.

White oak is not as open grained as red oak - although the early wood pores are large, they are mostly filled with tyloses and it doesn't take much effort to make the surface quite smooth.

The figure in white oak can be fantastic and I find it cuts cleanly and finishes nicely. This is from a chunk of almost dry white oak:

whiteoak_bowl_02.jpg

One way to find good white oak figure is to split log sections and look for the twisted pieces.

I can't understand at all the comments about how hard oak is to turn. Maybe it's what people are used to. If used to turning big green maple and cherry (almost soft as butter), yes oak is harder. However, with sharp tools and good technique I don't find it at all difficult or even unpleasant to turn. You want hard, try kiln dried lyptus. Or a variety of exotics. Or dry hickory. (I heard a preacher almost cuss over a dry hickory bowl.) Maybe it's just me - I like hard woods, the harder the better. I love turning dry dogwood and rock maple as well as smaller things from acrylics, aluminum, and brass too.

Again, the tools have to be sharp. And you can't get in a big hurry turning dry oak.

JKJ

[Leo Van Der Loo]

back to the staining of metals with oak has anyone tried to rust treat metal with the tannins kinda like gun bluing? or does anyone have any further ideas on this?

David if you look at my reply (the previous post) you can see the black colored bowl, it was done with the iron in vinegar (rusty nails, or steel wool works fine) Ebonizing species like Oak is real easy.

Just place some steel wool in a glass with vinegar and you’ll see small bubbles coming up from the steel wool as the vinegar is reacting with the iron, wait until the bubbling stops or just wait a day, pour the liquid off into a clean glass and wipe that liquid over you piece, you can do this a couple of times to get it as dark as it will get.

The dark color is quite shallow though, so don’t sand heavily after this

[Prashun Patel]

Leo, I thought he was referring to protecting the ways from staining with some kind of treatment. Did *I* misread?

David, if that was your concern, I personally have not experienced rust or blackening of my ways when turning oak - and I've turned a good deal of both white and red oak, both wet/green. For me, the key is just cleaning the curls off the bed between sessions.

I will also say that my ways were more prone to rust in the first couple years of ownership. Nowadays, they seem to be rust-resistant. I wonder if they've just built up some patina over time. Has anyone else noticed this?

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Leo, I thought he was referring to protecting the ways from staining with some kind of treatment. Did *I* misread?

David, if that was your concern, I personally have not experienced rust or blackening of my ways when turning oak - and I've turned a good deal of both white and red oak, both wet/green. For me, the key is just cleaning the curls off the bed between sessions.

I will also say that my ways were more prone to rust in the first couple years of ownership. Nowadays, they seem to be rust-resistant. I wonder if they've just built up some patina over time. Has anyone else noticed this?

OOps, you”re right Prashun, I didn’t read that post properly, sorry David.

I can’t say I have problems with the Oak tanning on my different lathes ways, they all do have a black patina, but no rust at all, mind you I do wipe them clean and dry when they get wet, with the sap of any wood, kind of like I have my baby colored skin anymore either

The biggest problem I have had with the Red Oak tanning sap was, as I was turning a wet chunk of Red Oak, I kept wiping the sap off of the outboard of my large lathe (it is a thick flat steel plate) and then used that hand to feel the contour of the piece as I was shaping it, well after stopping the lathe I discovered the blackening of the Oak, I tried to remove it, but it had gotten too deep into the open pores on the endgrain parts of the Oak that I gave up on that, and then Ebonized the piece, lesson learned, (Leo don’t you wipe the wood with your wet hands if you want to keep it from staining )

[Aaron Craven]

I'm currently working through a fair amount of Red Oak I got from a friend. I rather like it, personally. It doesn't finish as smoothly as many other woods because the pores are huge... as in, you can literally blow air through them huge...

Color and figuring can also be quite nice, though it's not to everyone's liking -- especially in the end grain.

For me the biggest problem is finish. I'm still trying to find a finish that I'm particularly fond of... some thoughts:
* Oil finishes tend to absorb into the pores where they sit and don't really dry in a reasonable amount of time... I've actually had a few where I had to vacuum the excess oil back out of the pores before the finish would complete curing.
* Wipe-on poly works well, but the glossy plastic look doesn't pair well with the rustic look of oak IMO
* I'm playing with rattle-can semi-gloss lacquer... not sure yet how well that's going to work out.

For red oak at least, I can't stress enough that the pores are huge... it's something that comes into play a lot as you work with the wood. For example, where you've cut along the grain on the bottom of the bowl, if you've cut across the pores, you won't have a perfectly smooth surface. To me, this is part of the character of the wood, but it may bother some. Also, the open pore structure means that bowls made from this wood are not particularly good for uses with very small particles or liquids (liquids will likely go right through the bowl).

[david privett]

really what I was asking was if I take raw steel (in the white as gunsmiths call it) and put it in a bucket of wet red oak shavings , get it stained well enough evenly if possible. then a light coat of oil would that act like as bluing for rust resistance?

[Justin Stephen]

I too have turned several oak pieces, both from wet and kiln-dried. I made a series of plates from some white oak offcuts recently that I found in the bargain bin at a local wood retailer and the results were lovely. When turning wet, it is one of the warpiest of domestic hardwoods so you need to give yourself a little extra wall thickness on the rough turning but I have not found it to be more likely to crack than most other woods.

[John K Jordan]

really what I was asking was if I take raw steel (in the white as gunsmiths call it) and put it in a bucket of wet red oak shavings , get it stained well enough evenly if possible. then a light coat of oil would that act like as bluing for rust resistance?

I haven't tried that, but it sounds like a good experiment waiting to be done. I'd love to hear your results.

JKJ

[Leo Van Der Loo]

really what I was asking was if I take raw steel (in the white as gunsmiths call it) and put it in a bucket of wet red oak shavings , get it stained well enough evenly if possible. then a light coat of oil would that act like as bluing for rust resistance?

I guess I did kind of answer that question, with this ”the Oak tanning on my different lathes ways, they all do have a black patina", even though I was still thinking you were worried about your lathe ways

However the shavings would give you a blotchy coverage I’d think, making tannic acid is probably an easier way to “bleu” your metal, it is used for making leather and is carried by the places that sell all the paraphernalia for that

[david privett]

I have some sawmilling to do with red oak maybe a lot of dust and some water for extra moisture and some raw black iron from a pipe clamp , and see what comes of it .

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I have some sawmilling to do with red oak maybe a lot of dust and some water for extra moisture and some raw black iron from a pipe clamp , and see what comes of it .

The shiny pinch bars were always bleu at my friends family sawmill, where White Oak was the staple of their operation (Red Oak is not native to Europe)