How to dry wood correctly HELP!

[Dave Gallaher]

I have access to wood Walnut and Oak that is being cut for firewood. This fellow has offered to send afew logs my way to be used for projects at a later date. What is the correct way to dry this wood to be used later. Any special care or things I should not be doing.

[paul dyar]

They say you need to dry to 6% to 8% for furniture. No way to do this without kiln drying. Tried some years ago without drying, and it separated. If you are going to use it outside, 25% may get by. You can dry it allot of ways if it is a small amount. Go to forestry service web-site for info.

Paul

[David Freed]

Walnut is very easy and oak is reasonably easy to dry without degrade. The key is to get them on sticks and not let the oak dry too fast. Oak is especially susceptable to checking "if" you let it dry too fast. As Paul said, you should get it kiln dried before you use it.

[Jim Becker]

I pretty much work with air dried lumber all the time...in fact, I prefer it for walnut. Once you have the logs cut into lumber, they should be stacked outside so that the ambient wind can blow through the pile, up off the ground a minimum of 8", using "stickers" (about 1" thick sicks) between the layers to allow for air flow. Do not wrap the pile in a tarp. Use a hard cover on top of the pile to keep standing water/ice/snow off of it. Adding weight on top is not a horrible idea, either.

While there is a general "rule of thumb" of one year per inch to get to acceptable levels (10-12º MC typically, but that varies with geography and ambient conditions), it's a good idea to invest in a moisture meter to check the material from time to time. Once it's down to 10-12º MC, you can stack it indoors. I tend to keep thin stickers in that new pile, too, to help facilitate any additional moisture release.

I do not agree that you must get the material kiln dried before use. Folks have made furniture for thousands of years with air-dried lumber. If you build with wood movement in mind, you should have no issues. There is one benefit of kiln drying (but only in a hot kiln and not all of them are hot) and that's critter killing. Hopefully, the material is clean and that will not be an issue anyway.

[Arnold E Schnitzer]

I'm with Jim. I make large string instruments and only use air-dried wood. It gets "tortured" in my attic for a couple years, followed by a couple heating seasons indoors. By then it usually measures about 8% MC. Air drying results in more stable wood which has nicer color, in my opinion.

[Joe Chritz]

I assume you plan on having these cut into boards for future flat work. If that is correct the above ideas are spot on.

You can do a google for a solar kiln and speed up the drying some or you can stack them in a cheap metal shed. Paint the top black and add a ceiling fan and you can cut a lot of time off the drying.

If it is for turning just seal the ends with anchorseal or wax and let em' sit off the ground until you are ready to use them.

FWIW, kiln drying is pretty cheap if you need the stuff faster. About $.30-.50 a BF here.

Joe

[Dave Gallaher]

Yes I do plan on getting it cut before the drying process. If I chose to go with the kiln dry method where would I find someone to do this? How long does that take? I have a very large attic above my shop, would this be a good spot to expose the wood to heat? I'm in NW Ohio attic temps in the summer can be 100 plus. Thanks to all for your input in the end the decision will be mine but it really helps to have people who have done this give there opinions. Thanks again.


Update I'm learning already. The attic may not be the best place to dry Too much heat. Outside covered, stacked level, with stickers.

[David Freed]

I will agree that many people successfully use air dried lumber.

Many people get a bad impression of kd lumber because they have used lumber that was rushed through a conventional kiln. There have been several people that would ask me to dry lumber for them after they got some "baked" at the nearby conventional kiln.

To kill bugs the core temperature of the lumber needs to stay at a minimum of 130* for at least 4 hours. 130* is fairly "cold" as far as kilns go. A conventional kiln will reach 180* at the final stage of drying. Softwood kilns will reach temps of 220*.


Update I'm learning already. The attic may not be the best place to dry Too much heat. Outside covered, stacked level, with stickers.

Drying in an attic isn't too hot, after the lumber has been air dried first. Many people dry lumber in an attic or barn loft as Arnold mentioned. That is just another version of solar kiln drying. Only in very hot outside temps will the temp in an attic get get above 130*. The lumber warms and dries slowly during the day, and equalizes every night.

[Joe Chritz]

There are literally people who are PhD's in lumber science when it comes to kiln drying wood.

All woods have a particular "schedule" that it needs to be properly dried. Some are better or worse than others at degrading if air dried or improperly handled. Generally the thing to watch for with a kiln is drying to much to fast.

Check with any lumber supplier and see if they dry their own wood and if they take customer wood. I have a shop about 6 miles up the road that takes customer lumber for $.50 a BF.

An attic is a decent place to store the lumber to finish it (air drying will only get abou 12% in most areas) if you can support the weight. The rungs of a truss aren't designed for any real weight load unless they are attic trusses.

Just storing it inside for several weeks should be adequate. A moisture meter is a relatively inexpensive and very handy item to have around.

Joe

[Dewayne Reding]

I have a small amount of DIY harvested walnut and oak air drying in the loft of my well ventilated shed. Didn't have anchor seal so I made due and melted some parafin wax in a tin foil turkey roaster pan. Dipped the end of the logs before I stickered. Made a huge difference in the oak. The untreated oak scraps I had laying around split quick. In my estimation, when working with smaller logs, you could lose a large percentage of your yield if you don't control end checking.

[Kevin Godshall]

All of my lumber is air dried. Most of mine starts out as a tree someone wants cleaned up and I salvage whatever I can that my neighbor will "Wood Mize" for me (and lucky for me, he is not picky).

My only word of caution is that a drying day in the winter is NOT like a drying day in the summer. When your wood is frozen, it ain't drying at all. I don't know what temperature wood freezes at (meat freezes at 28), but every day you're below that, you're not drying a bit.

Same goes for the summer and high humidity. Once the air is saturated with moisture to a certain degree, your drying process slows way down.

Best thing to do: get it cut, sticker it up....... forget about it. Come back sometime after a year is passed. If you do a lot of it, get a moisture meter and check it. Don't find out after it's in the shape of a kitchen table or a hutch to find out that it wasn't ready.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Find a place indoors ( a garage will do).
I've tried it indoors and out doors and I lost all the wood I put out doors. All of it took on a dry rot.
Treat the ends with whatever you have whether it's latex paint or Anchorseal.

[Jim Andrew]

I have a small Cook mill, and mill my own lumber. After air drying you can kiln dry or just move it into a heated building. Heating and AC dry it down to the same as your house after a month or 2. Be careful and don't take a bug infested board into your house. Kilns kill the bugs by heating hotter than the bugs can take. Need to kiln dry ash. I've not had much trouble with walnut or oak, although walnut can get bugs in the sap wood.

[Jim Becker]

Cliff, I've dried several thousand board feet of poplar and walnut in my back yard since 2000 and didn't have any issue with dry rot. I have 1500 bd ft of poplar stacked "as we speak".