Cookie Experiment

[WDH]

Wood cookies sell pretty well, but they almost always crack and are a challenge to deal with as large cracks are not desired.  If you sell them green, they have not cracked or warped yet, but they almost always will do one or the other.  Therefore, I would prefer to sell them after they have air dried so the customer can see what the end product will be.  Any cracks or defects will be apparent when they make a decision to buy. 

I decided to try and slow down the drying to help with cracking.  So, I stickered the cookies like I would do green boards to create a small space between layers, covering the top layer with other boards to sandwich the cookies and keep the top layer from drying too fast.  The stickers were some old crown moulding that was left over from my house build more than 35 years ago (35 years!!).  They are 1/2" thick.  Time will tell.  It should only be a few weeks and I will know if stickering them has helped or not.

These cookies are walnut and ERC.  I have found ERC to be less prone to crack than other wood cookies.  After sawing the cookies, I plane them using a sled.  The spiral head on my planer does a good job of smoothing out the saw mark and making the colors much easier to see. 

You can make pretty good money on the cookies.  There are about 150 in this completed stack.  To calculate a price, I determine the "board feet" in the average size cookie by squaring the diameter in inches x .005454 to get the amount of surface area in square feet.  Then multiply by the thickness.  So, a 12" walnut cookie has a surface area of .79 square feet (12x12x.005454) times 1.5 inches of thickness = 1.185 square feet.  This approximates board feet.  So, if I am selling walnut at $8.00/bf, then each cookie will cost 1.185 x 8 = $9.48.  So, I will charge $10 for each walnut cookie.  Using the same logic, the cedar cookies are worth about $5.00 each.  They will sell for those prices if they are not cracked too bad.



 



 

[YellowHammer]

Nice.  So you are planing them green?  With their unusual shape, how do they stay fixed to the sled?

[Magicman]

At least those look good now.

I have a nice batch of Walnut cookies that I have loaned to wedding parties several times.  They did not crack because I sawed them from a log that was several years old.  Of course the bark is gone.

[WDH]

The bark will fall off these as they dry because the tree was still growing when the logs were cut.

Robert,

The sled is 19.75" wide and 4' long out of 3/4" plywood with a half inch lip attached to the front.  You put a cookie against the lip, then add another one behind the first butted up to the first, then another, then another.  On bigger cookies, you might only be able to plane 3 or 4 at a time.  Smaller ones can be placed two per row.  In the 10" cedar cookies, I could plane 8 at at time.  The key is to only take off 1/32" at a time, so it can take 3 or 4 passes to get them smooth.  Worth it, though, because planing them smooth really shows off the beautiful colors.

[Magicman]

A "flap" sander on a side grinder also does wonders.

[boardmaker]

Didn't someone in the past use heavy duty corrugated cardboard as stickers in the past.  I wonder how that turned out?  I can't remember if that was here or WoodWeb.  The principle seems sound, but it will take a long time to dry.

[Savannahdan]

I'll be interested in how they turn out.  Also, I tried some PVC pipe for stickers on 8/4s oak.  The stuff is wavy.  Not like the stack that was done with wood stickers, which were nice and straight.  Just an experiment from another discussion.

[Texas Ranger]

I wonder if you take a single cut to the pith, dry them, then replace a wedge of the same wood, or different, if you would have a saleable product?

[Crusarius]

replace the web with a different species? That could look interesting.

[21incher]

As Magicman did, I recently sawed some walnut cookies from a log that had been drying for over 4 years and they did not crack, but the bark came loose on some of them. I tried making some thin cherry ones and they looked like a funnel after drying for a while.

[irvi00]

The cookies I've sold were green and the customer would cut thin plywood to screw onto the bottom to hold them together. Most were one time use. He said that he gave most away after whatever event they were used for.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

 

 

[YellowHammer]

WDH, did you notice any negative impact (rusting) on the planer from the green wood?  I assume the sled will protect the cast iron bed?  The results are fantastic.

Poston, Thats good!

[Magicman]

 

 
Actually that guy escaped and is now on the loose!!!  Last seen wearing a purple shirt and socks and hiding behind a purple building.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

Drinking Purple Drank!

[Andries]

You guys are killin' me!
. . . and all that purple !
Just how much purble drank can one man tolerate ?
Yellowhammer, you're closer than me.
Get over there and cut the boys offa that drank ! !

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

To late.......Danny has drank every drop.....Bless His Heart.



 

[Magicman]

Somewhere in the midst of all of this lies a Good Country Song.  I just wish that we had a bass fiddle player.   smiley_hillbilly_tub_base

[Andries]

Name of the song . .
Purple Cookies Crack Me Up
?
OK
I'll call it a day now . .   

[LeeB]

Them white legs really stand out in all that purple.

[thecfarm]

 :D POSTON  :D
He has to get that mills fixed. He has way too much time on his hoofs.  ;D

[ellmoe]

/quote]

   On top of everything else, a "fashion model" to boot!

[WDH]

Since I am an Admin, I think that I will delete this post.  And delete a few of you as well  . 

[customsawyer]

Sic-em

[YellowHammer]

You guys are killin' me!
. . . and all that purple !
Just how much purble drank can one man tolerate ?
Yellowhammer, you're closer than me.
Get over there and cut the boys offa that drank ! !

Can't do nothing about it, I've seen them drink clear drank that would run a sawmill if it got near the fumes.

I'm thinking WDH could use the purple drank to make money by serving a swig with each cookie, you know Country Cookies and Kool Aid.  The more the customer drinks, the more they will buy.

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

I drank to much clear and did the reverse roll on the ground.
Thanks Yellow Hammer for showing me how.  :D

[Andries]

Since I am an Admin, I think that I will delete this post.  And delete a few of you as well  .

Start with that POSITRON guy.
Drinks clear and then keels over, all proud of his 'ray fleck'.

[dsgsr]

Would banding the cookies while they dry stop or minimize the cracking? Just a thought.

David

[YellowHammer]

The cracking is due to shrinkage, and there's not a lot that can be done although there are some factors that can mitigate it. 

I always like to visualize what's going on, so a few years ago I ran a little test.  I took a poplar cookie, and made a single handsaw cut from the edge to the center.  As the cookie dried and shrank, the saw kerf opened up, and eventually ended up in this Pac Man shape.

[Savannahdan]

Add the eye (painted black) and paint the rest yellow and you'll have a sure money-maker.  Great experiment.

[WDH]

Banding the cookie does not eliminate the stress.  The outside of the cookie parallel to the growth rings (tangential) shrinks about twice as much as across the rings to the pith (radial).  This differential in shrinkage is inherent to the wood, and no amount of banding or weight will overcome those forces.  The best you can do without chemical treatment is to dry them slow to keep the stresses building gentle as possible.

[drobertson]

What about water baths? Like the old log ponds?

[TKehl]

I'm going to have to take a picture of some Oak cookies drying in my shop.

From a standing dead tree that I thought would be good and dry (saved a few pieces from the furnace).  The outer ring didn't split and is an intact ring, but the heartwood cracked something FIERCE.  Looks like a stylized star with a round frame.   :D

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

....... and no amount of banding or weight will overcome those forces. 

The same is with lumber. I've stacked, stickered and air dried Poplar.
Then take a 10-12 inch wide, dried Poplar board and saw it with the miter saw and watch the stress release while sawing. A little dangerous at times.

[WDH]

It can kick back on you when ripping on the table saw, too, and hurt a Goat.

[Joey Grimes]

I ordered 5 gallons of pintacry I've got a few 12" walnut logs not big enough to saw lumber I'm going to saw cookies  and soak um in a vat of pintacry and see what happens. Do you have blowout on back edge of cookies when you plane?

[WDH]

Blowout depends on how green they are.  On the green walnut, no blowout.  On the cedar, because the logs had laid around for 6 months, the sapwood was essentially dry and there is some chip-out/blow-out on those.  However, I found that with a random orbit sander with a 40 grit pad, I can smooth them out quick and easy.

If the walnut is a bit dry, sometimes the bark will blow-out in the back.  On walnut cut in the growing season, this is not a problem because the bark will not stay on anyway once the cookie shrinks.  If the walnut was cut down in the dormant season and sawn into cookies within a few weeks, the bark will usually stay on, and you are OK if you plane them very soon after sawing. 

[YellowHammer]

Does the green wood cause rust or other issues with the planer?

[Joey Grimes]

Does the green wood cause rust or other issues with the planer?

From my experience the biggest problem planing green wood is chips are so heavy the dust collecter can't keep up and gets  stopped up..

[kelLOGg]

Does the green wood cause rust or other issues with the planer?

From my experience the biggest problem planing green wood is chips are so heavy the dust collecter can't keep up and gets  stopped up..

I have experienced the same thing.
Bob

[SineWave]

I've heard where archaeologists have discovered old dugout canoes, ship's timbers, etc., that were submerged in rivers for many years, and they tented them and used ethylene glycol (anti-freeze) to replace the water in the timber. Supposedly this would prevent the wood from cracking all to pieces, but it apparently took years to complete the process. I wonder if this would work for cookies?

[Resonator]

Wood turners have been using PEG (poly etheylene glycol) for years to stabilize the cell walls in the wood for turning, especially on huge pieces (google Malthrop). Different chemical than antifreeze (etheylene glycol).

[Joey Grimes]

I was initially planning on using peg the only snag I read was you have to have some kind heating element to keep it at a minimum temp .I may try the peg after I have ran my test with the pintacryl  to see if it is more economical 5 gallons pintacryl delivered is 280.00.

[TKehl]

FWIW, here are some cookies cut from standing dead and lightly spalted wood.  Chainsaw cut in  Feb. and left stacked in an unheated area.

[WDH]

I will have to say that the stickering of the wood cookies and covering the top layer with a layer of nurse boards seems to slow the drying and reduce the cracking.  I cut these cookies about 3 months ago and stickered them and covered the top layer.  The results have been good.  Much less cracking than I have seen before.

Red cedar.





Black walnut.



 

Southern Yellow Pine.



 

You can see some mildew and mold from the slow drying on the pine.