Bad Wood for Woodturning

Video Transcript

"In this series I want to talk to you about the types of wood that is not good to turn. This is an example of some green pine that was cut last fall and it has been allowed to dry over the winter. This crusty material you see right here on the end grain is pine tar or pine sap that weeps out from the green log after it is cut. Now if you are turning green pine on the wood lathe and you hit one of these pockets of pitch you can imagine how messy it is going to be. It is going to get all over you, all over your tools and your lathe and all over our shop. It is not a very pleasant experience so green pine is something you want to stay away from. Another thing you want to stay away from is wood that has a lot of cracking and end grain checks. If you try to turn a piece that has cracking that goes all the way through, there is a good chance that this wood blank could break apart while the wood is spinning on the lathe and it could hit you or it could hit something in the shop and it can cause injury or damage so you want to stay away from that. This is another example of some wood that would be very difficult to turn. This is a hard wood and I am not sure what type of hard wood it was because it has been allowed to weather and rot to the point where it is very punky and pieces of it are breaking apart. This is something that isn't very easy to turn and if this was the only piece of wood in my shop to turn, I'd probably still pass on it."