drying wood

[auld argonian]

Heard a segment on the radio yesterday with a local artist named David Philpot. Philpot carves these fantastic staffs (staves?)...here's a link to a photo of two of them:

http://www.art.org/permanent-collection/dphilpot2.htm

I guar-ron-tee that any of you who saw, as I once did, a gallery full of these staffs would be jonesing like mad for one to have and hold...the work is phenomenal.

Anyway, David pointed out that he does not remove the bark from the branches that he harvests until they are dry...his experience is that this helps keep them from developing splits. Nice to know as I look at the cherry tree in the front yard and contemplate a pruning plan with the side benefit if having lots of nice cherry branches to use for various projects.

Any of you woodworkers found this to be true as well?

Best

AA

[RK-REX]

While I've never heard of that, I'd think you'd have to be careful to keep critters from living under the bark and dining on the wood. I have heard of painting the end of logs with oil based paint to seal them and promote slower drying. I've only air dried dimensional lumber or had it kiln dried. Never done an entire log.

[pdcorlis]

One of my old friends was a wood sculptor - he always left the bark on and used parafin wax to seal the cut ends during drying and before carving.

[brandycr]

My grandpa use to do those when I was a kid.I remember us walking around looking for branches that had wrapped around other branches or had vines grow around them so he could get that cool twist in it.He use to put something on the ends of the sticks and stand them in the closet till they dried out.Remember more than once grandma fussing because of them da** sticks getting her coats dirty lol.I dont remember him taking the bark off but he could of we are talking about a few years ago lol .

[Tartan Hiker]

Yes, keep the bark on and paint or wax the ends of the stave to slow the drying process as much as possible. Figure on waiting at least a year before you can safely use the stave. Put it up somewhere that it won't be in the way and will be subjected to moderate temperatures.

This is exactly the procedure used when making self bows of single pieces of wood.

[cacunn]

Unabashed plug for my sister; who is paying her sons way through college by writing and selling books on wood carving and other projects. One of the books she has is on carving wood sprits on walking sticks etc. This is a e-book and can be found at:

http://www.carvingpatterns.com/eprojects/eprojects.htm

She also has a number of pattern books that might come in handy when making a sporran etc.

Tell her you know me and she will add 10% to the bill.

One of my current projects is to do one as a handle for my sgian dubh. The question I have is - if I dress the wood sprit in a PC will it be a evening wear sgain dubh?