Good morning- I am into turning as well as furniture and small items like boxes, and am lucky to live in an agricultural area with plenty of orchard wood easily available. One problem in using them is, the old trees have been pruned every year, and have grown in angled directions, making the pith wander like crazy through every stout branch. Short of using only the bottom trunk piece, what is the collective wisdom here on dealing with removing center pith to use this drying orchard wood?

I have tried all types of orchard wood with very little luck. Peach, plumb, apricot, cherry and the like. The best results have been with persimmon, walnut, and some of the older apple trees, pecan is always good.
Almond & pistacio, forget it.

In all cases the trunk wood was the best, the limb wood does not grow evenly, the bottom is compressed with the top having larger annual rings which creats an offcenter center, if that makes any sense.

But I'll keep trying to find that one stick which will turn out a master piece.

Have you considered yard trees? Where I live in Calif. there are a lot of Modesto ash trees, good for turning, carving and turning into flat stock, Liquid amber is also a good tree along with mimmosa (sp) exceptional grain pattern and a rainbow of colors.

The very first thing I do is remove the bark, paint on or pour on melted perafin on the ends to try and prevent and reduce checking. On larger rounds, I will bore a hole from top to bottom, it reduces the internal pressure and allows for moisture to escape from the center. There are many more ways of doing this but this is what works for me.

Good luck
Joe

Barb, I usually either mark the pith position at both ends (mentally) and then mark a line to the side of the pith line. I do this on both sides of the pith trying to stay clear. With a bowl length piece the pith will only wander so much. If I am working with a large log, I will cut the slab left from the center into several pieces for hollowforms or wine stoppers. I coat all end grain with two coats of Anchorseal and the other cut surfaces with one coat.

I sticker the pieces under cover and try to rough turn. If the branch is not too large you can experiment with using the piece whole with the pith in and turning green to completion. The worst that can happen is that it can warp and crack.

There is so much variety within species that hard and fast expectations are not reasonable.

-------------------------
Barbara

Thanks for the input. I suppose I've been trying to deal in too long a lengths for what I'm dealing with, and finding the pith wandering off track unexpectedly. If I think turning blanks, I should cut the limbs down to 10" and then cut the pith out and let it dry a little, or turn green as Barbara mentioned and count on truing it up afterward. Small boxes would work that way too. I've only turned one 'green' piece so far, and it was Wet..phew. Thanks, all. Back to the wood lot.