[exDM69]

Green woodworking is an entire field of its own. Not very common in industrial scale but it was a common method a few centuries ago.

Examples of things where green woodworking is common: spoon carving, bowl turning, chair making, etc.

The idea is that wood is worked while green to make 80% finished blanks, which are dried slowly for some months or years before finishing the rest of it. This gives less distortion to the shape as it dries. And the drying times are faster because it's all small pieces at that point. The time from tree to product is shorter.

It is an almost extinct craft but it is a lot of fun for woodworkers not under schedule pressure.

[ne8il]

I just finished a green wood post-and-rung chairmaking class last week. The posts are split out and steam-bent, while the rungs are dried in a makeshift kiln (a box with a heat lamp). The posts are then above ambient humidity, while the rungs are dried below it. As the entire chair equals out, the posts will dry out and compress onto the tenons of the rungs, which will swell up a bit and lock in place. We did use glue but you don't really need to. Neat stuff.

[exDM69]

Cool. I've also built a bar stool with green wood but it's a fairly crude shop stool rather than a fine chair.

A green wood specialty in my neck of the woods is sauna ladles (used for throwing water). You can buy wooden ones but they are made from seasoned lumber with CNC machines and don't survive more than a year before they crack. The one I made from green wood is still going strong after 7 years in extreme humidity and temperature environment.

[sevenseventen]

It's absolutely routine for hobby and artisan turners and carvers, though. In between the first turn and the second turn, you can air dry, kiln dry, and other techniques. With air drying, you actually want to slow the drying so that it happens more evenly. Otherwise, the outside of a vessel dries faster than the inside, which splits the wood. In general, packing a vessel inside and out with wood shavings helps even the process.

I've also had great results using silica gel on smaller items, although it can be hard to scale it to larger vessels. Much faster drying than air alone, with greatly reduced distortion and cracking.