Cherry—Cherry wood is one of the most popular woods to burn in fireplaces due to its pleasant, non-smoky aroma. It is very east to split, tends to burn at a medium heat, and does not produce much smoke. However, it tends to spark a little more than the average hardwood and can cost a little more than the average wood.
The wood is straight grained and splits rather easily. For the most part, Black Cherry will be found growing amongst other hardwoods, such as oak, elm, ash, walnut and the like. The wood has twisted, stringy grain, with old grown-over knots, and is much more difficult to split.
Common Uses: Cabinetry, fine furniture, flooring, interior millwork, veneer, turned objects, and small specialty wood items. Comments: Black Cherry develops a rich reddish-brown patina as it ages that's frequently imitated with wood stains on other hardwoods such as Yellow Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera).
How Long Does It Take Wet Seasoned Wood To Dry? It can take freshly cut 'green' wood to naturally dry out at least 6 months if the wood has a low starting moisture content and its stacked in the correct environment, If not, wood can take up to two years to season.
Ash: One of the best woods for a steady fire and good heat. Although ash will burn when green, it burns better when seasoned. Birch: This wood smells great, and has good heat but burns quickly. Cherry: Season this wood well and you'll have a slow burning wood that smells wonderful.
Freshly cut wood, called green wood, is loaded with sap (mostly water) and needs to dry out first. It's hard to light and once you get it going, it burns very efficiently and smokes horribly.
Black cherry is good firewood so choke cherry probably is too, if you can find any big enough to be worth your while .
Let's take a look at some types of wood that should never be burned in your fireplace:
- Soft wood. Soft wood from trees like cypress, pines, or firs burns very rapidly, creates a great deal of smoke, and rapidly coats your chimney with soot.
- Endangered species wood.
- Oleander.
- Mexican elder.
- Anything Named Poison.
- Driftwood.
Place a dehumidifier in the center of the room once all of the standing water is removed. Set it to the highest extraction setting possible. Turn it on and leave it running for at least 24 hours to pull moisture from the boards. Place fans blowing across the surface to further aid in drying the wood out.
Check the moisture content in the newly exposed wood. If it isn't below 18 percent, the wood must be dried out before you continue. Exposing it to the air will help a lot, but you can hasten the process with a heat gun or hair dryer. When the wood is sound and dry, brush or spray on a liquid borate.
Thin wood slices soaked in denatured alcohol will dry without shrinking so quickly that cracks form. Fill your container just over halfway full with denatured alcohol so you can soak the slice without the liquid spilling over the sides.
Air-Drying Lumber
- It's the low-cost, low-tech way to dry lumber. Here's how to do it right.
- Put Your Pile in the Open. Locate the stack in an open area exposed to the prevailing winds.
- Prepare a Good Foundation.
- Prepare the Boards for Stacking.
- Use Good-Quality Stickers.
- Box-Pile the Stack.
- Put a Lid on It.
- Weight the Stack.
Given enough time (assuming it's not getting wet again) that wet lumber will naturally dry. If the outdoor temps are above 60 degrees F then it won't take much time. Maybe 3-5 weeks to get from 18% down to 14%. But, if it's cold & rainy outside it might take 6-12 weeks.
Kiln drying your own wood at home can be a great way to sustainably harvest the materials around you, and dry it fast enough to build furniture with. If furniture is made with wood that is too wet, it will continue to dry and crack, possibly ruining the piece.
We recommend not stressing the new joint for at least 24 hours. For Titebond Polyurethane Glue, we recommend clamping for at least forty-five minutes. The glue is completely cured within 6 hours.
Modern high-temperature, high-air-velocity conventional kilns can typically dry 1-inch-thick (25 mm) green lumber in 10 hours down to a moisture content of 18%. However, 1-inch-thick green Red Oak requires about 28 days to dry down to a moisture content of 8%.
The seasoning or kiln drying process dries the wood from the centre out, and a little rain will make virtually no difference to the moisture content of the wood. However, prolonged exposure or immersion of your logs will increase the moisture content over time and is not advisable.
Try the soft maple or Poplar. Those are fairly soft and should turn very well. If you still have problems then it might be the tools, how you use them, or it could even be the lathe.
But learning the basics of woodturning isn't difficult. After you know how to use your lathe safely and the techniques for using each tool, it becomes a matter of practice. While wood turning technically falls under the umbrella of woodworking, it is often considered a completely different craft.
Pine is an excellent wood for beginning turners. It is a soft wood and is easy to shape on the lathe. Cutting with a gouge or skew chisel produces a better finish than a scraper when turning between centres. You can see the cells of the wood where the cut has gone across grain in the bottom.
- Reader's Choice - Top Woods to Turn. With so much effort put into such a small piece of wood, turners are very serious about their stock.
- Figured Maple. There are several types of figured maple including curl, fiddleback, spalted, tiger, birds-eye, and more.
- Walnut.
- Cherry.
- Boxelder.
- Rosewood.
- Pacific Madrone.
- Red Elm.
Salt will dry the wood faster but you will only be able to use stainless steel fastners. You can soak lumber in salt water to preserve it but it leaches out after time. However, you can expect most types of wood to take about one year per inch of thickness to dry out.
Because the wood is sensitive to quick changes in moisture content, it's essential to completely turn the piece you're working on within a relatively short period of time. If the wood is really wet, I've found waiting ten minutes or so allows the surface to dry just enough to let the sandpaper to do its job.
English oak is not a particularly difficult timber to turn. It can be fibrous and requires careful cuts with sharp tools to avoid end grain tear on faceplate work but on spindle work, it is a fairly easy timber to cut and shape. A spray all over the lathe, chuck and tools with something like WD-40 works well.
