Thread: Bought some wood today! good choices?

Sent you a PM, but for the knowledge of others…


That is a problem with some woods, especially if they are still green (not kiln dried). Once cut the wood looses a lot of moisture very fast and it will warp, bow, twist and sometimes split. Get yourself a pot of boiling water. Put it in the bottom of your oven (don’t turn the oven on; you are making a steam chamber). Put the Lignum slabs on the oven racks above the water. Put the steaming water in the bottom of the oven, wood on the top shelf. It will steam and get soft. Take them out after an hour, stack them on top of each other and put a bunch of rubber bands around them, tightly. Let it dry on the kitchen countertop for a day or two and take the rubber bands off. You can also put it between a couple of 2x4’s and a couple of clamps if you have them.

The goal is to steam the wood soft, then clamp them between a couple of flat things and let them slowly dry. Rubber banding them together usually works or put them on the table, put a cookie sheet on top and a few phone books/bricks/or anything else heave on top. They should straighten out. That is how you bend wood, steam box it to heat and soften it, bend it to shape, clamp it and let it dry.

The only time I had it go brown was when the bandsaw blade was getting dull and the wood got hot. It basically scorched and discolored. That has to be sanded off, but that is based on very limited use of Lignum, so it may in fact change colors. But, when I turn it on the lathe it is green from start to finish.

Before flyrods started being made from bamboo they where often made from lignum (greenwood). Can't say much about the wood itself, but obviously it was thought a good choice for use in wet environments.

Ed M.