Q&A SERIES / How to prevent cracking and dry wooden bowls 

Great video.I wouldn't have thought to turn them if they start cracking. I found out the reason I lost so many out of the oak was I was sloppy and didn't turn them to an even thickness. The bottoms split where they were thicker than the sides. I'll be taking more care in the future.

Thanks for the video Tomislav.

I feel a lot better now that I see you are also having problems with Plum! 😎 There is still some of it left and the trick seems to be to leave it in a bag for well over a year.

Great advice - thank you!

I once turn all of my bowls. Much less cracking that way. Turn them down to about 1/4 inch thick. MY favorite is Pacific Madrone. It cuts like green pear or dogwood, so very smooth and even grain. Due to high water content, it warps more than anything I have ever seen. I could boil it, but that is too much work, and I don't like what it does to the colors in the wood. I did find that I got less cracking if I got a tree with the spring sap running. More cracking if I got a mid or late summer piece. I still can't tell what it will do as it dries. I can take a cored set and they all warp some what differently. Plum, well, it does like to crack.

I just turned some plum blank, but one part of the log was too rotten to make a blank out of it (the rot went much deeper than I expected). So I turned that one into a really thin bowl instead, and immediately finished it with oil. Some of my blanks started cracking already, but the thin turned one didn't, it just warped a bit. It's too thin to fix the warping, but the bit of warping is more than compensated for by the beautiful texture of the wood. It is very spalted (that is very normal when it's so close to actually rotten wood), so it almost looks like a piece of red rock with veins. Yes, it wobbles a little, but it ended up more as a piece of art than a bowl to put stuff in, so I think I got lucky. I don't think it finished warping yet, but because it is so thin, that should be within a month now. So, that may be something to experiment with: if you know a wood cracks easy, and you have a big log, try to also make one or two really thin bowls out of it, and see how the wood works. I'm sure it's different for every species, so success will vary, but it will give some experience for that type of wood at least. Especially if you find a piece as rotten as the one I had (gladly, it was only the bottom 50 centimeters of the log that was rotten so bad), it's the only thing that could be done with it. Generally, the further away you stay from the pith, the less it will warp, but it will always warp. Maybe next time I find a big log of plum, I'll saw it into quarters instead of halves, and make some much smaller bowls or cups or something like that, just to see how that works out.

3:20 How many percent is the ideal humidity of the room for drying the wood slowly enough? 3:40 What paint do you use? Is it food safe?

Heliotropism is perhaps the key to understanding better how the slipts happen.

Great video 👍😊

great video

Fino ti polica izgleda.

Pozdrav, odličan video i vrlo edukativan.... Ja koristim parnu rernu, staju oko 4 do 5 činija, odmah nakon prve obrade... Kasnije uvijen u strec foliju i pustim mesec dana bez otvaranja... Merim vlagu cesto, pri dnu i po obodu... Uspeva za mene al ne uvek... Kad hoce da pukne, ona pukne... Ili je vec imala nevidljivu pukotinu... Pozdrav i svako dobro, samo napred.

When you seal your bowls do you do the whole thing or just the end grain

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Доброго вечера, Томислав. Если можно - маленький совет. Что бы меньше трескалось я вешаю шторку из плёнки. Сохнет медленнее и трещин меньше. А сливу сушить только в пеньках. Пробовал по всякому - трескается. В пеньках трещины появляются только в 10%. Спасибо за видео.

Really helpful video. When you want to re-turn the bowl do you start by putting the foot in the jaws or place the rim in the bowl to reshape the foot and then put the foot in the chuck and work from that?

Cracked bowls can still be used…don’t burn them. You can make a bird feeder (which sells) big bowl on top connected to small bowl with branch/turned. I usually turn a water drip slot on top bowl rim and round off the foot on both bowls.