Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to Cammie's Garage.
I recently got an interesting commission from
someone that lives in my neighbourhood.
She planted a Bradford pear tree with her
son when he was eight years old.
He is now 35.
Unfortunately, they had to cut the tree down
recently.
She wondered if I could make a sculpture out
of some of the wood.
I have a couple of pieces here.
It is actually quite curly.
This is a crotch piece that has some nice
figure in here.
The design is actually based on the logo of
his favourite band.
It is kind of like a stylized S.
She felt that it represented her and her son together.
I thought that was an interesting challenge.
Unfortunately, this wood is green as the leaves
on the tree.
I am going to attempt to dry these in the
microwave.
First, I am going to cut out the design.
There is a very good chance this wood will
crack when I try to dry it.
I am going to use all four of these pieces
of wood to have a back-up, just in case.
Welcome to Cammie's Kitchen.
This actually should be an interesting experiment
to try and dry these pieces of wood with the microwave.
We can measure it to see how much it shrinks.
We can also weigh it to see how much it changes.
I have a little scale here, kitchen scale.
According to the scale, it weighs 660 grams.
I am just going to write that right on there.
Let's start cycling them through the microwave.
I am going to do it for one minute at a time.
C is for Cammie.
I cycled the pieces through the microwave at least once a day for over a month
and let them sit in front of an air-conditioning vent.
They lost about a third of their weight in moisture.
OK.
This way?
Yup.
Thank you.
That is it.
I just wanted to have these aligned so I could...
