Stabilizing Part 1

Ogre's wife here and I have had quite a few people asking about how I stabilize all the wood we use and fill our hybrids. First thing first, I get all my supplies from TurnTex ( turntex.com ) the owner Curtis is amazing, never hesitates to answer questions and is dedicated to helping you be successful in stabilizing. AMAZING company!!

The first thing I do, and probably the most important, is dry dry dry that wood!! Any green wood I get I put in a carboard box with wood shavings or on my shelf for a good year. I heard about the cardboard box and shavings from a guy in South Carolina that taught me how to turn bowls on the lathe and it works great for me. I always mark what the wood is and the month and year before I put it in to dry. It sounds like you will be waiting forever but once you start into this you will rotate through wood faster than you can keep up (that's how it is for me at least). I dry it like that initially because if you were to put it in the oven right away you would get huge cracks through it. Once that first part is done I put a piece of masking tape or painters tape on an end with a number. I weight it and record the number and beginning weight on a piece of paper (I just have a legal pad..nothing fancy) and put it in my smoker at 220 F. You can use your oven, a toaster oven, whatever you have but you need to have it at least at 212 as that is the boiling temp for water and you want all that moisture evaporated. After 24 hours I weight the wood again, and then every 24 hours until I have not lost any weight for a full day. Now I know a lot of people will put their wood directly in containers or vacuum seal bags, from what I have seen that works great, I am never that far ahead of the game though so I let my wood cool and put it straight in my tank.

Part 2 will be coming soon, let me know if you have any questions!!