So how come your shop smells so funny?

I think you need to cook it and distill it. Don't know if the oil is in the wood, bark, or the vegetation.

Ken Grunke SW Wisconsin

Coulee Region Woodturners AAW chapter

||This one actually started out with a drawer in the bedroom which has an ||odd smell to it. || ||Any clothing left in it for more than a day starts to ||smell also, and if you are wearing a shirt, let's say, you start to smell ||a bit like old socks yourself. || ||Now this could lead to a discussion about my social life, but let's forget ||that for the moment. || ||Anyway I figured that a good way to mask the smell would be to coat the ||inside of the drawer with cedar oil. || ||But when I found out how much the darn stuff costs, bout $50.00 a pint, ||I started to look for another solution. || ||The brilliant idea hit me that I can press my own cedar oil. I have a ||hydraulic press, and more importantly, I have the cedar trees. || ||So I cut off a batch of this years growth, stick it in a confined spot ||that's sort of like a cylinder with a piston, and start to press the stuff. ||I fully expected at least a few drops of oil would trickle out the ||bottom. || ||All I got was a lot a very squashed green bits. Oh there was ||an oily feel all right, but the several drops of cold pressed cedar oil ||failed to materialize. || ||Now I'm wondering what the "right" way to do this is.

Cedarwood chips and sawdust are subjected to steam distillation to extract the oil and the yield is about 35%.

Parts Guy

As someone else already mentioned, Cedar oil is harvested in a distillation set up. Try putting a few boughs, (the leaves contain the bulk of the oil) in a covered pot of boiling water for a bit. Let cool and skim off the oil. That should get you a little. (There's a reason it's $50 a pint ;-)) It would probably take you a half ton of boughs or so to get a pint.

My Grandfather built a couple of stills for this purpose. It involved a boiler, a huge vat with a lid. The vat was packed full of cedar boughs (probably about a ton at a time), steam was pumped through the vat, condensed, and the oil seperated. This took several hours for each vat load, and lots of vats to get a 45 gallon drum of oil.

Since you just need a little maybe using alcohol to remove it would work. I'd try chopping up the leaves and maybe use a chain saw to get a bunch of chips. Then, soak with alcohol in a closed container for a while. Check every day or so by removing a sample and testing it for smell. Just dip a piece of paper, maybe tissue, let it dry and see what kind of smell you get. When ready just paint the alcohol soultion inside the drawer if the alcohol won't damage the finish. ERS

"DOC" wrote

Have you tried a nice potporri burner? How come guys don't say, "Hey, this Saturday, let's go to the mall and get a potpourri burner for the shop. And while we are there, we could look at some underwear, too."

Steve ;-)

Why couldn't you just put some of the cedar chips in the drawer? Seems to me that the vapors given off by the chips would(could?) eventually over power whatever is causing the odor in the first place.

Wayne

If I understand you correctly, you suspect the stink is comiung from the drawer?

If this is the case, the whole chest of drawers would stink. Eptty the drawer and set it in the sunshine for a day. Now stick the whole drawer in a big plastig bag overnight and give it a sniff. If it still stinks spray or wipe it down with some vanilla extract. That should kill any stink and it is a lot cheaper than ceder. Cedar is to kill or repell moths.

or go to your friendly Indian Market and buy some camphor oil. Works as well as cedar oil if not better.

Though you may smell reminiscent of mothballs...

Gunner

"This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose and Bioalchemic Products specifically does not warrant, guarantee, imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person, entity or deity with respect to any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object or by any attempts to destroy it by hammering it against a wall or dropping it into a deep well or any other means whatsoever and moreover asserts that you indicate your acceptance of this agreement or any other agreement that may he substituted at any time by coming within five miles of the product or observing it through large telescopes or by any other means because you are such an easily cowed moron who will happily accept arrogant and unilateral conditions on a piece of highly priced garbage that you would not dream of accepting on a bag of dog biscuits and is used solely at your own risk.'

Spoilsport

Drawers don't smell like old socks. How about finding out what smells and address the problem rather than the symptoms. That way you should get a permanent solution and possibly a cheaper one. Mind you, blaming the furniture is not an excuse that I have heard before. Good luck

John

Why not just put a little gear oil in the drawer. Then you socks will smell like your shop.

Eric R Snow wrote:

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 09:57:27 -0500, Ray Spinhrne wrote: Ray. that's a great idea. My wife didn't mind the machine shop smell

27 years ago when we met and were courting. And when I was the only breadwinner. But she doesn't like it now. If I just leave some buckets of coolant around the house it'll soon innure her to the smell. Just gotta figger out how to hide them buckets. ERS

Hmm... drop it in the Glade air fresheners... Plug it in, plug it in...

Tim

-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @

check out the furniture and look for a dead rat someplace in the furniture... take the rat out and the furniture will loose the smell...

On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 13:33:00 +0100, "John Manders" vaguely proposed a theory ......and in reply I say!:

remove ns from my header address to reply via email

You need to talk to the dog more often. When there's a bad smell, and it gets round to blaming the dog, the furniture is all that's left for the poor beasty.

And yes sometimes I have had smell like old socks that were _accurately_ attributed to the dog!

One of my grandpas built a few stills back in the North Carolina hills, too, but he wasn't cookin' up no cedar boughs....:-)

Regards,

Bob

Ah. I see I am going to have to build myself a still in order to solve this problem. ;-)

And here I was thinking that my next project would be a fancy new robot.

Thanks all, DOC

Wow. I just read a post from that vaginal exercise balls thread, and now I come to this. The subject name has just GOT to be more than coincidental.

Tim

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 21:54:02 -0500, "Tim Williams" calmly ranted:

Do you still wonder why so many of us wear mustaches, Tim? Scent collectors.

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