Hickory Cambium removal question

[mutt]

Well...I have heat gun and a wallpaper steamer, I'll give them both a try this evening and report back tomorrow

[Pat B]

Do you have a pressure washer. I think BJ has used on for removing cambium.

[mutt]

Ok, heres the verdict.
I tried the dry heat but didnt have much success. It did make the cambium pliable and I was semi successful at getting it to lift up a little but my opinion is that it cooled to fast and just reverted back to being stuck. Sorry Gut. Just to be fair I didn't try all that hard cause it seemed like it was shaping up to be a pain in the butt and I was more anxious to try the steam.

Steam turned out to be the ticket. I wet a wash cloth and let it sit on the tip and however far it reached down the limb for about 5 minutes. Then I held  the small wall paper steamer attachment over the wash cloth for about 5 minutes you could not hold your hand on the wash cloth it was so hot. I pilled the wash cloth off after I unplugged the steamer and wedged my 3" pocket knife between the cambium and the back and started prying and working down and the cambium started to lift and peel off in a matter of minutes I had gotten past the point I had steamed and had to stop because the cambium layer was starting to beak apart. I am just going to do small sections at a time and see if I can get it off in one piece.

[mutt]

another pic

[Allyn T]

I might have to try that I have a wallpaper steamer that we never use

[mutt]

I should have added that after the wood completely cooled 15 minutes or so, I checked the moisture content on the back of the bow where i peeled the cambium up and it was 7%.

The moisture on the outside of the cambium was 13.6%

[Eric Krewson]

Dean Torges was under the impression that steaming wood helped dry it out, I agree.

I worked in a coal fired power plant for 30 years that produced power with steam. Water turned to to steam expands by by a factor of 4000%. If you get a limb above 212 degrees the moisture in the wood will expand to the outside of the wood, it won't be going into the wood.

As an unrelated footnote, airline pilots have a mystical air about them for their expertise, child's play in my opinion. I flew as a crewchief in the Army so I was around a lot of pilots.

Here is my control board on a 500 MW generating unit back in the late 70s, there are two more boards behind me not shown in the picture. The auto controls seldom operated and I ran a majority of this equipment manually, I flew by the seat of my pants so to speak. I had to know what was what and be able to go out into the plant to each individual component and isolate it for maintenance, thousands of things.

 

[mutt]

Thanks for sharing that Eric,
That's a bit like I feel trying to make and shoot primitive bows except I'm always turning the wrong knob or pushing the wrong button! Lol

[Jakesnyder]

I actually just tried the pressure washer idea. It works awesome. My pressure washer is 3000psi and it curls the cambium up as you work down the stave, then you just pull it off by hand and continue. It also doesn't affect the wood at all as far as leaving marks or cutting into the back of it.

[gutpile]

well you gotta try Im glad it worked. but I was under impression it was small pieces of cambium... that is a thick piece there... great job... will put the results in my pocket for keeps.. gut

[PatM]

I just feed the stave through a foil covered boiling  pot and pull the bark off in one piece.  There are numbers that indicate steaming wood actually  increases tensile properties.

[DC]

Just to be a pain in the a$$, that ain't cambium, that's the inner bark. Cambium is one cell thick. I know it's semantics and almost everyone knew what he meant but I just hadda say it Look up cambium.

[PatM]

Yes, but you need to remove the cambium to get the inner bark off.  It's the" glueline".

[gutpile]

cambium IMO is the lil brown pieces left after bark is removed.. what I was imagining he was wanting to remove is what is left on the stave in the pic above... JS.... gut