Plum

[DC]

I just collected a couple of Plum staves. They're about 2" dia. Should I leave the bark on? I know Plum is tough to season so I'm going to keep them in a plastic tube for the first couple of months or so. It seems to help with Ocean Spray which is also tough to season. The difference here is OS is all over the place and Plum is tough to find. I'm just not sure if debarking and shellacking would be as safe as leaving the bark on. I'm planning on splitting them(with a bandsaw) without leaving a lump for the handle, I'll glue on a built up handle. I've done one other Plum and it split through the handle so I thought i might eliminate that risk. I'll seal the heck out of the ends but I also wondered about maybe one coat of shellac on the belly to slow it a bit more. Any other ideas would be welcome. Thanks

[willie]

plastic tube...... slow dry....

not very experienced with plum per se, but if you are creating an conditioned environment for your stave, could there be a way to displace or otherwise remove the oxygen or whatever feeds the fungi?

[DC]

I wonder if I could spritz it with bleach every so often?

[upstatenybowyer]

Have you read the plum info in TBB4 under the bow wood chpt? Baker gives some good advice on how to season plum.

[DC]

I have now, thanks.

[upstatenybowyer]

Keep us posted. Your last plum bow looked great. 

[DC]

All I have to do is live another year

[Hawkdancer]

Go marir is go gahir!  May you live long and may you wear it out!  Irish toast on St. Patrick's Day! Make lots of good bows and some excellent so ones, too! . Good luck with the plum!
Hawkdancer

[Springbuck]

  Yeah, I wouldn't peel plum.  The problem seems to be less fungus and more bugs where I live.  Some little beetle grubs love that first ring of sapwood under the bark.

[joachimM]

If you split it and not peel it, the belly will split itself.
 
Peal it and seal it on all sides, and dry it slowly. Cracks appear when wood dries too fast in one of three directions (longitudinal, radial, tangential).
Where I live, beetles find plum a treat. They lay their eggs on/in the bark, the newborn grubs start digging through the bark and start boring the layer underneath.
Once debarked, they don't lay their eggs on it anymore.

[Springbuck]

IF you do peel it, I would IMMEDIATELY split and/or reduce it, seal it heavily everywhere, like joachimM said, and keep it in a cool place out of the heat and wind.

Most of the plum I have access to is small diameter and usually has some spiral grain.  Just last April I cut a 3' sucker branch about 3.25" on the fat end which I stored bark ON, ends SEALED with TB glue.   It was fine in May when I checked, and again later in the summer.  I had hoped the temps would sort of slowly rise at about the same time the branch was drying.  I checked on it in mid August and the whole branch had ruptured a 3/8" wide spiral check, halfway through the log, through the bark, in the middle, not the ends, but almost full length.  Totally ruined.

[DC]

I decided to take the bark off one to see how it went. The bark came off so nice that I thought there is no way I'm going to fight with dried on bark so I debarked it all. Roughed them all out and I put two coats of shellac on the backs and ends and fades. I put them in clear plastic tubes and sealed them up. The first three days there was condensation on the inside of the tubes which I dried out first thing. Then it went two days with no condensation. This morning they were damp again so I dried them out and back in the bags. I just turn the bags inside out so they're dry inside. The staves weighed around 1200-1500 grams when I put them in the bags and this morning they had all lost around 100 grams. No sign of checking. I'm going to start leaving the ends of the bags open for a few hours each day. This may sound a little labour intensive but it's not really. The bags are on a couple of saw horses that I walk by a 100 times a day and it just takes a few minutes. In a few weeks I'll probably leave the ends of the bags open 24hrs a day and then they are pretty much on their own.

[DC]

Thought I'd update this. The staves are still in the plastic tubes with the ends open. The weights have dropped from around 1500 grams to about 1000. The only one that checked was one with the full diameter handle section and that was my fault because I took it out of the tube. It split a bit in the handle section so I put it back in the tube. Just as an experiment I took one offcut and split it with the bandsaw and just left it laying around, no sealing, no nothing. It's fine, it just split to the center anywhere the bandsaw didn't get to center. The ends are fine. It's going so well I would suspect that this wasn't plum but I've eaten the fruit, I know it's plum. They are about 2" in diameter but they are only about 6 years old. That's 1/3" in diameter a year. Do you think maybe that has something to do with the ease of drying?

[Badger]

  Plumb is one of the few woods that I really dry slowly, you can rough them out for a faster dry but almost always the handle area splits badly. I prefer either wrapping them with some slits in the wrap or a plastic tube until they drop below about 15%.   You can leave the Bark on plum if you like.

[DC]

From what I'd heard I was expecting it to be harder to dry than Ocean Spray but it was(well it's not done yet ) a lot easier. The offcut I mentioned is dry now, the weight is going up and down with the RH so it's pretty much reached equilibrium. Granted it is only about 1/2" thick but a piece of OS that size would still be dripping (OK that's a but of exaggeration ). I'm still going to wait a few more months but I don't see it taking a full year like I was expecting. Looking forward to it, the offcut feels really springy.