how well dose willow turn?

[Richard Clements]

how well dose willow turn? I'm new to turning, my father-in-law asked me to prune his weeping willows, then in the mail today I got the new issue of WOOD, and it had an article on making cheep woods look like expensive ones, one being willow to walnut, looking at it as soft as willow is it should be easy to turn right? also it's cheep (FREE for the work) so if I screw it up lessoned learned, with out the tears.   Also is there anything I should do when harvesting it, after I've sawn it to width? for other wood working I would paint the end with latex paint and sticker-stack it in the shed for 6-10 mouths with the thicker blanks do I need to wait longer, also someone told me that some woods can be turned green, or non-dried can I do this with willow? or any wood, or were the blowing smoke

Richard

[Andy Dingley]

There's more than one willow, and they vary. There's also a rec.woodturning group, where you might get better answers.

IMHE though, willow turns badly. It's "easy" to shape it, but it's so soft that you just can;t get a good surface on it, no matter what you do.

Split it roughly to size, drawknife the protruding bits off to balance it and reduce the amount of rough turning, then get it into the lathe and use it. If you're learning to turn, then the important thing is to _turn_ some timber. You'll be limited by the amount of free green timber you can find, more than you will by anything else - if you've got it, get it turned.

It doesn't even matter if you're just making firewood, just get some hands-on time there. One trick is that if you're turning something narrower, don't just go at it with the roughing gouge, turn a few roundels and beads into it on the way, then turn them off and do it again.

Some species are obviously more desirable than others. I'll pick up a piece of box or yew and carry it home, and I'll get the car to collect some hornbeam or spalted beech. I'm nt likely to make much effort for willow though, other than to drag it indoors off the firewood pile.

[Silvan]

Everything can be turned green. Green wood is easy to turn. Streams of shavings go flying off the lathe like silly string if you're doing it right. The problem is in the drying afterwards.

There are all kinds of magic voodoo techniques to drying green turnings. Some people put them in a bucket of dish soap and water (google up LDD, liquid dish detergent, in the context of turning). Other people impregnate the wood with PEG. Some stuff the work in paper bags. Some put the pieces in the microwave.

I've found none of the voodoo works reliably, and the better the piece came out, the more likely it is to wind up as firewood. Sometimes the piece doesn't crack, but usually it does. If it doesn't crack, usually it still warps something awful.

Anyway, you'll get nothing but negative sour grapes stuff from me, so you'd better go listen to a second opinion over on rec.woodturning.

[Andy Dingley]

There's useful voodoo to avoid cracking, much less to reduce warping..

A good approach to that is to get familiar with the particular timber / tree, then if it's prone to warping. turn something that is changed by warping, not ruined by it.

[George]

Willow and its cousins cottonwood and true poplar are about as close to bulletproof in drying as elm.

You can discard the voodoo and stick with science if you like, you know. Movement during drying is predictable in both direction and dimension. You just rough to ensure that after movement you have enough to turn true again, and keep the rate of loss from the outside surface within range of replacement from the interior.

[Andy Dingley]

Not for branchwood, or the sort of irregular small log that's commonly used for green woodturning. You can predict shrinkage in a flat board, but it's impossible to predict warping when you don't even know the internal structure of an uneven billet.

[George]

Within reason, yes it is. There's always "fudge factor" thickness when doubt crops up.

Of course 25 years of splitting firewood has taught me a lot about visualizing what's inside a piece of wood, even under the bark.