do you have a river or Creek you can leave an unsealed green test slab in for a few weeks? Or a dehumidifying Kiln you could send a test slab to?
Hi Kiwi, no unfortunately I don't have either, no water and no kiln available. I actually just live on a 1/2 an acre, not much, but get the trees from family and friends and bring them to my place for the milling. I do know alot of the english walnut had stresses in them. I'll mill limbs and branches, not just the trunk, so some of it is from limbs. But in general, this wood is by far the most prone to checking I've ever had so far. I'll be doing the glue test instead of paint but been too busy to do any milling last few weeks. I have now tried two coats of paint though instead of just one and that does make a big difference also. I think one is woefully insufficient, but two may be good enough. One coat of Arborcoat II seems woefully insufficient too. - Paul
Congrats on narrowing down what works best for you.
Maybe you have or can find a kids paddling pool or some other way to make a temporary tank long enough to take a test slab? I haven't tried the total immersion idea with slabs but have with firewood and it certainly dried quick, but I never really paid much attention to the end checking of firewood. At some stage, I'll take a freshly fallen, stressed log, cut it in two and tie one length off in a river for a while and see what happens when it's pulled out and sat next to the other one.
Congrats on narrowing down what works best for you.
Maybe you have or can find a kids paddling pool or some other way to make a temporary tank long enough to take a test slab? I haven't tried the total immersion idea with slabs but have with firewood and it certainly dried quick, but I never really paid much attention to the end checking of firewood. At some stage, I'll take a freshly fallen, stressed log, cut it in two and tie one length off in a river for a while and see what happens when it's pulled out and sat next to the other one.
Interesting idea on the immersion. I'm assuming the idea here would be to relieve the built in stresses without having the drying process affect that part? Explain the concept more if you would. My slabs are often 8' long or so so I would need a big pool to do it.
On the clamping idea above, also interesting. That would "contain" the stresses for the time it is clamped and could allow the drying to complete while separating out the built in stresses. But those stresses would still be there after it is dried or mostly be there. So I think it may still want to crack after the clamps are removed finally. But don't know. I love this free thinking going on here!
To give some idea of the limbs I will cut, I have some that are almost perfect half circles of limb at about 6' radius, 15" width! I ripped those in the middle vertically through, thinking maybe a bed headboard/footboard project or big round table filled in the middle with other wood pieces or something. Like a giant bow for a bow and arrow, but pulled with tensile stress on either end ready to "fire" the arrow. This isn't dried yet but we'll see how that goes. English Walnut is very strong, about 2x Oak, so can grow limbs in all kinds of weird directions and not care much about it. Having said all the above though on the limbs, I've also had bad checking on the main trunk parts too, without much of the residual stresses present there. - Paul