Drying wood via alcohol for instrument making?

[toman]

I was just reading about this concept for turning bowls and other relatively small items, and was wondering if there was any data or interest in using it for instrument making wood. Basically the idea is that the lumber is roughed out, then soaked in alcohol. The alcohol displaces the water inside the wood, and then when the wood is removed from the soak, the alcohol quickly evaporates leaving through-dried wood without warping, cracking, checking, etc. I know people have tried all sorts of hairbrained scemes to speed up the aging of wood, but these guys seem to feel this is pretty effective...

[Bob Branstetter]

Are you sure that you are not talking about Polyethylene Glycol (PEG)? That is what is usually used to stabilize green wood for turning.

[toman]

Nope, denatured alcohol. As seen here.

[Diego]

I've tried it once with a fingerboard (finished fingerboard) to remove some 5-year old gunk. I really dries the wood and if you can get absolute ethanol (200 proof) instead of denatured alcohol, it works like a charm. One thing though...you'll have to hidrate the wood thoroughly afterwards (I believe) because with weather changes I feel it can lead to cracks. This is based on my humble experience and just by doing it once...hope it helps!

[Silversorcerer]

"Drying" wood is not the same thing as aging it. If it were it wouldn't matter how the moisture was removed. Wood turners and carvers also prefer kiln dried wood to aged wood because one is dry and soft and the other is dry and harder. This is not necessarily a case where what is good for one wood craft is good for all others.

There are other chemical changes that happen in the wood as it ages in addition to normal loss of moisture. Some water is lost through a gradual acid-base reaction in the wood and this is not just evaporation of moisture. Without knowing how the alcohol soak might affect the chemistry of the aging process, I think it would be risky to apply this procedure to good tone wood. Alcohol is acidic compared to water, so it is bound to affect this aging chemistry, but experimentation would be required and some analysis of the cellulose hydrogen bonds over a considerable time before these affects could be known.

[toman]

Yes, obviously drying wood somehow is not going to achieve the same end as ageing it. But, if it didn't have any negative effects, it would cut way back on the costly process of waiting for the wood to dry enough to make instruments from. Might be an interesting experiment to try with some wood one would otherwise not make a nice instrument out of, maybe just a top or something. Rough it out, do the alcohol soak, then get it close to the final dimensions and watch it over a period of time to see what happens...

[Bob Branstetter]

Originally Posted by toman

Might be an interesting experiment to try with some wood one would otherwise not make a nice instrument out of, maybe just a top or something. Rough it out, do the alcohol soak, then get it close to the final dimensions and watch it over a period of time to see what happens...

That sounds like great fun All I have to do is join and glue together the spruce wedges while they are wet (green). Then carve this wet wood to near the near the final graduation and then soak it in alcohol (10 or 15 gallons should be enough for a bass top). The alcohol should do wonders for that center (hide) glue joint assuming that you could glue the wet/green wood in the first place. I would no doubt enjoy regluing and clamping those 2 loose halves after it "dries". On second thought, I think I'll stick with air dried or vacuum kiln dried tonewood. It's one thing to turn green wood on a power lathe and a totally different thing to carve it by hand. Thanks, but no thanks.

[toman]

Originally Posted by Bob Branstetter

That sounds like great fun All I have to do is join and glue together the spruce wedges while they are wet (green). Then carve this wet wood to near the near the final graduation and then soak it in alcohol (10 or 15 gallons should be enough for a bass top). The alcohol should do wonders for that center (hide) glue joint assuming that you could glue the wet/green wood in the first place. I would no doubt enjoy regluing and clamping those 2 loose halves after it "dries". On second thought, I think I'll stick with air dried or vacuum kiln dried tonewood. It's one thing to turn green wood on a power lathe and a totally different thing to carve it by hand. Thanks, but no thanks.

I meant for those of us with nothing better to do than jack around with screwy ideas like this.

[Bob Branstetter]

Originally Posted by KSB - Ken Smith

A few sample pics of my wood air drying. I thought the Pic links would take up way less space that the posting..

There is a lot of nice looking woods there Ken. It kind of reminds me of what the Hammond Ashley tonewood (drying) building looked like before they got out of the tonewood business after Hammond's death.

[Damon Rondeau]

Originally Posted by toman

Yes, obviously drying wood somehow is not going to achieve the same end as ageing it. But, if it didn't have any negative effects, it would cut way back on the costly process of waiting for the wood to dry enough to make instruments from. Might be an interesting experiment to try with some wood one would otherwise not make a nice instrument out of, maybe just a top or something. Rough it out, do the alcohol soak, then get it close to the final dimensions and watch it over a period of time to see what happens...

[aside]How unfortunate that some people think you deserve a lecture just for asking a simple question....[/aside]

toman, you refer to the potential economy of the process. Have you seen what alcohol costs, denatured or not?

The other thing -- wouldn't you want to use pure alcohol, 200 proof? I'm no chemist, but folks very familiar with using shellac (the solvent for which is alcohol) talk about the difficulty of keeping water out of the alcohol when you get to that level of purity (water in the shellac creates cloudiness of the finish.) The mixture really wants to be 190 proof, not 200. The rest? Water, I would imagine.

[toman]

One would think you'd want the purest alcohol possible, but the guy in the original artical (blog, whatever) just kept topping his tank up to dilute the water, and apparently it worked fine for him... And yes, obviously the cost of the alcohol is not cheap. If it were to be used extensively, some numbers would have to be crunched to compare the cost effectivenes to that of storing wood for extended periods.

I don't think this is going to be a viable option, at least for instrument making, but I thought it was an interesting idea, and maybe one folks would like to learn about and discuss, or even try...

[Jazzdogg]

Originally Posted by Silversorcerer

"Drying" wood is not the same thing as aging it. If it were it wouldn't matter how the moisture was removed. Wood turners and carvers also prefer kiln dried wood to aged wood because one is dry and soft and the other is dry and harder. This is not necessarily a case where what is good for one wood craft is good for all others.

There are other chemical changes that happen in the wood as it ages in addition to normal loss of moisture. Some water is lost through a gradual acid-base reaction in the wood and this is not just evaporation of moisture. Without knowing how the alcohol soak might affect the chemistry of the aging process, I think it would be risky to apply this procedure to good tone wood. Alcohol is acidic compared to water, so it is bound to affect this aging chemistry, but experimentation would be required and some analysis of the cellulose hydrogen bonds over a considerable time before these affects could be known.

Are you willing to share a few bibliographic sources? I'm in the middle of a thesis on "Urban Forestry" that includes sections on air drying, and kiln drying, and I'm always interested in reading new information related to wood technology.

[Martin Sheridan]

I've moved to Mexico, so I think I'll try Tequlla(actually I've been trying quite a bit of it). I think you'd get brain damage just sniffing that much alcohol.
Besides, it's easy to buy properly dried wood, so why not just do that?