Help with air drying holly

[cmboggs]

Recently I’ve acquired a large(ish) holly stump that I’d like to use for turning, carving, inlays, etc. Attached is a photo of the gnarly beast.

I know very little about air drying wood, other then you put it in a corner of your shop and forget about it until you trip over it looking for something else. My question is where do I start?

 

[TENdriver]

Recently I’ve acquired a large(ish) holly stump that I’d like to use for turning, carving, inlays, etc. Attached is a photo of the gnarly beast.

I know very little about air drying wood, other then you put it in a corner of your shop and forget about it until you trip over it looking for something else. My question is where do I start?

View attachment 190803

Chris,

Not an expert on drying Holly, but I have done some small sample tinkering.

Holly can be a little more challenging to dry than some woods. If you harvested it at this time of year, you’re ahead of the game. Springtime is really bad for Holly due to staining that causes discoloring. To keep the white color, you’ll want to quickly process and dry the wood. Letting it sit usually doesn’t seem to work.

For the small pieces I have been doing, I am slicing off thin tablets to do small inlays. I managed to set some pieces on fire while using the kitchen microwave to accelerate drying. Go very gentle on that technique. It’s really easy to transition from perfection to ignition with the smaller pieces and you won’t like the smell of the toasted Holly!

 

[Mrfixit71]

I was given a holly stump about 4 years ago or so. Painted the ends and put it out on the woodpile for a couple years. When I went to turn it to make a bowl, the wood cracked and split as fast as I turned it. I salvaged one bowl by stopping and applying CA glue to the cracks as soon as they developed. The wood was various shades of purple, green and creamy white and turned out to be a very unusual bowl with lots of grain changes. You might have better luck turning it wet, although I'm not sure you'll control the cracking.

 

[Berta]

We paint the ends of logs. We have found the quicker we do this the better. We have also tried Cactus Juice. We still get various results. It’s still fun to try.

 

[Roy G]

With a stump like that, you should decide what you can get out of it and cut it up. Try to cut through the pith and remove all the bark if you can. Paint the ends of the pieces and put aside for drying. Since it's now winter the staining should be minimal and the wood should stay white.

Roy G

 

[golfdad]

I got some from Chuck and Berta a few yrs ago. Painted the end and put it in the shed. It retained the creamy color and no cracking. Just turned very nice bowl out of it