Before I split these pieces of oak, what have people made out of some of the “cookies” if I decide to cut out a few?
Then how thick would you suggest cutting the cookies? I understand I would have to surface them on the CNC. Then put on some anti cracking compound. And Would I surface first or apply the anti cracking first?
There is not much bark, if any on most of it.
I have used Pentacryl in the past to treat from cracking and it worked great.
First get some AnchorSeal on those faces because within a few hours/days they will start splitting. You can also use latex paint if you dont have anchorseal.
I have made side table tops with cookies. I have made clocks. Basically anything you want. You can flatten one side if you shim the underside up so it does not flex when surfacing. Then turn the cookie over and flatten the other side. I have a slabbing table that I flatten slabs and cookies on but the Shapeoko is capable of flattening both sides.
Things like clocks can be any thickness you want. You just pocket out the back side so a clock mechanism can fit in. You should consider the weight hanging on a wall. For a table thicker is better and you make legs to go under it. Wood is incredibly strong in a small scale of like an end table or bed side table. If a bedside table is large enough you can hang a drawer under the top.
I am a turner and personally I like to make bowls and platters. The Shapeoko is also capable of making platters.
So you are only limited by your imagination.
Just get some sealer on those cookies/logs because they crack fast.
Guy, do you suggest surfacing first or sealing first?
The answer depends. If you are not going to get to them right away seal now. Even if you surface the cookie you need to seal green wood quickly because it will crack. So if you are ready to work with them start machining. Just remember green wood will dry and will crack. So it might be better seal them and wait a year to let them dry out and stabilize. When green wood dries it changes shape. So if you machine it green when it dries it will be a different shape.
When I cut green bowls I rough them out to .75"-1" thick and put them in a paper sack for a couple of months. I weigh them when I put them in the bag and periodically weigh them. When they quit losing weight they are ready to finish turn. I recently cut a green oak bowl. I put it in a paper sake and it weighed 3.1 lbs. About 6 weeks later it weighed 2 lbs. So that green bowl lost 1/3 of its weight in the bag. I did put anchor seal on the roughed bowl while in the bag. The problem is the green wood loses moisture it loses it at different rates at different places. So the shrinkage caused by losing water causes internal stress and the wood will distort. The pith at the center almost always cracks. The wood around the outside of the tree is newer wood and the growth rings are further apart and the summer wood is less dense than the winter rings. So the summer rings lose more water and that causes shrinkage and cracks and distortion.
A rule of thumb for air drying wood is about a year for each inch of thickness. So a 2" cookie would take between a year and two years to dry down to 10-20%. Dealing with wood above 20% will cause problems in the finished product. Even 20% is high if you are going to make fine furniture. Making rustic furniture is less critical but legs can become loose because when placed inside an air conditioned house the moisture in the wood will be pulled out.
So green wood is not much use. For a fire it wont burn well and smokes a lot. Green wood changes shape is is no good for making wooden objects while green.
The only exception is newly cut wood that was standing dead. It may still have significant moisture but will have much less than a standing live tree.
The maple cookies I cut out of a tree came from the trunk area and was full of more water then the rest of the tree. I cut them into 3" thick slabs and rolled them into my garage. They stayed in there for a year before I even thought about touching them. When I began working with them, I thought the moisture was low enough, but I was wrong. I finished surfacing both sides of the cookie. I made legs and installed them. I put my coating over the surface and left it in the garage shop on my work bench overnight. I came back the next morning and opened up the shop and found a huge crack coming from the edge back towards the center about 8" long. The crack opened up as wide as 1 1/2".
I learned a valuable lesson that day. First off, I learned that wood that is thicker takes longer to dry out before being able to be worked. Second, I learned that if the wood has too much moisture embedded deep in the wood and I started to work the wood, the heat from working the wood rapidly released the moisture causing distortion and twisting of the wood along with the split that I mentioned earlier.
And lastly, don’t rush projects with wood not ready for working. I could have stacked the cookies with small slats between each, and placed a heater towards them and let it run through them. This would have been the same as kiln drying lumber, but the time of the heater running with the amount of electricity used to dry these cookies wouldn’t have been worth it. Plus I didn’t have a moisture tester to know how much moisture was still in the wood.
I have lumber sitting around all over inside my new shop drying and staying dry so I have lumber to work with, but even the little bit of rain can send enough moisture into the shop air and the wood absorb it up like a sponge. I had pine that was in a home for many years and we perfectly flat. I removed it from the walls and hauled it to my shop. It wasn’t exposed to any rain or anything like that, but within minutes of taking it to the shop and the wood sucking up the moisture from the air, the pine cupped and became useless as a wide board. I could sit and watch the boards bow across the width of the board right before my eyes. Nothing I could do but realize I lost the lot of them to this cupping. Ended up having to rip the boards down to thinner strips and use them for other projects that way. I’m sure glad I didn’t spend money on these boards. I would have been pissed to have them all go bad and me being helpless to do anything about it.
Like you I stack my “good” wood in my shop. In this shop I use wood to heat. Humidity stays around 20 - 30. So I don’t have your issue. Would a dehumidifier work? I dun know.
Good Luck
I could insulate the shop completely and then run it as a temperature controlled shop, but that would just cost way too much money just to insulate the shop. At least the ceiling is spray foam insulated up to 4 inches thick. That does help but with everything else the way it is, I’m not sure it was worth the foam. But it is done and now I figure out how to move forward with what I have. A dehumidifier may work somewhat, but with me having to open the big door to keep it cool in the shop just defeats the purpose. So, all I can do is hope for the best in moving forward and hope one day I can seal up the shop and have a bit more control on the moisture within.
Understand, Six of one, half dozen of another. Life
