# Drying blanks



## norman vandyke (Sep 5, 2015)

Any advice on drying burl blanks faster? Right now I have a bunch of knife blocks, ranging in moisture content and covered in as2. Just wondering if there's a faster way that air drying to get these down to emc.


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## JR Custom Calls (Sep 5, 2015)

An old freezer of fridge with a fan and a dehumidifier works well. There are lightbulb kiln plans all over the Internet as well, I just never was very keen on the idea of having a heat source in my garage next to my 100lb propane cylinders.


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## norman vandyke (Sep 5, 2015)

I suppose a heat lamp pointing down at them in the basement would probably work, unless 110° constant in open air is too much.


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## manbuckwal (Sep 5, 2015)

As you know, every wood is different . I use a microwave on Buckeye sometimes because it can tolerate it in small doses.( 5 seconds for 2" square blocks) and I always cut oversize if I plan on speeding up drying to account for warp.


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## norman vandyke (Sep 5, 2015)

manbuckwal said:


> As you know, every wood is different . I use a microwave on Buckeye sometimes because it can tolerate it in small doses.( 5 seconds for 2" square blocks) and I always cut oversize if I plan on speeding up drying to account for warp.


Something tells me box elder burl won't hold up to fast drying in a microwave. Pretty sure my Russian olive burl knife blocks will hold up though. What about oven drying at low temp? Would there be much chance for case hardening?


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## manbuckwal (Sep 5, 2015)

norman vandyke said:


> Something tells me box elder burl won't hold up to fast drying in a microwave. Pretty sure my Russian olive burl knife blocks will hold up though. What about oven drying at low temp? Would there be much chance for case hardening?



I will use a toaster oven after several trips in the micro. I also coat the entire blank in AS2 . There are a few folks on here w kilns that might be able to answer about the case hardening . @Treecycle Hardwoods is one person I know that runs a big kiln .


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## justallan (Sep 8, 2015)

I have a toaster oven that I use before I stabilize pen blanks and it works good, although everything that I've done was already half dry sitting on the shelf.
My girlfriend just gave me a big dehydrator that I'm going to try.
I would be careful about using a heat light and feel that if you have it pointing straight at your blanks you would stand a good chance of it drying to fast and cracking and especially warping.
Just my opinion.


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