As I want to be able to teach courses in shrink pot making in a single weekend, I did some experiments on drying them in a microwave oven.
Normally I'd wait at least a couple of weeks for the shrink pot to dry (and shrink!) before I'd make the lid. So, up until now I only taught how to make the pot and not the lid, while of course It would be much nicer to be able to do an entire shrink pot with a lid during the course of a weekend workshop. Well, now I'm able to. I'll only be using this for workshops as I can normally just let them dry slowly on a shelf.
Lessons learned:
Remove the bark when using a microwave oven as it will come loose or even somewhat explode due to the water vapour that builds up pressure in between the wood and the bark.
It will need around 7 runs of 90 s at 750 W.
Let it cool down in between runs for about 10 minutes.
7 сен 2024