Drying a Small Quantity of Cherry

[Andy Haney]

You may remember a thread from last year about the cherry tree I was lucky enough to harvest. It has been stacked and stickered since July 1, 2004. It isn't ready to use, but I have a special situation.

The person who gave me the tree REQUIRES a picture frame made from that stock NOW. I asked a local sawyer for help, and he checked the moisture content with pins. It is currently at 14%, which I think is too high to work reliably. As I have to do this NOW, and with THIS wood, I plan to rough cut the pieces and speed the drying in an oven. Is this feasible, and what guidance can anyone offer to help?

[John Hart]

I've tried this in the past Andy and you usually end up with warped wood unless you are willing to keep the oven very low (about 120 or less) for a week or so. You may have better luck with the microwave method or alcohol. There are others here that are better versed at this sort of thing but that's been my experience.

[Ian Abraham]

For something like a picture frame, pick a nice straight grained piece and use it at 14%. The wood will dry and shrink a little in use, but you dont have fancy dovetails and wide glue-ups to mess up. A straigh grained piece shouldn't warp much either. A picture frame isn't going to fall apart because it dries a little more.

Other option would be a big box, a light bulb and a fan. Stick it in there for a few days, but I think your 14% air dried wood will be fine for a simple frame.

In some climates 14% IS kiln dry :eek:

I assume your wood is still air drying in the open, or an open shed? If thats the case it's probably not going to dry much more no matter how long you leave it. You could bring it inside and sticker it in an interior environment, it will dry down do a better MC in a few months.

Cheers

Ian

[Joseph N. Myers]

Andy,

1. I have no experience is drying wood in an oven. I do know (I think) that you want to keep the temperature no higher than 120 degrees and that you have to keep the humidity kind of high (say 40% to 60%) to keep the wood from drying too quickly, one of the biggest problems with kiln drying.

You could do a search on the web to see if you could find something.

2. You could try to find someone in your area that dries wood and they could throw your stuff in for a small price. You could try www.woodfinder.com (http://www.woodfinder.com/) - put in your zip code, distance and what your looking for and it will print out matches. One problem with the service is that it cost money to be listed so not all places in your area may not be listed. Also select "sawyers" especially those that list KD lumber for sale as they sometimes have kilns.

3. Wood is dried in microwave ovens all the time but for a different reason than what one would think. It is used to determine the moisture content of wood if you don't have a moisture machine, i.e., cut 2 pieces from the same area of wood, put one in the MW and keep heating/weighting it until it stops losing weight, weigh both of them, divide the MW into the non-MW and that is the moisture content (i.e., 5 oz for non-MW, 4 oz for MW, 5/4 = 1.25, 25% MC).

If your wood is short enough and/or the microwave large enough, try it, you'll like it. 8% is a pretty good value to shoot for. BTW, search this forum and/or the web for the procedure in case I missed something.

4. I've been in your situation more than once (I have well over 10,000 board feet of walnut, oak, cherry, etc) and I find one of best ways of "quick" drying is to put it in the sun. But before I go on, let me say that most of the wood has been air dried for at least 5 to 10 years and what may happen is some of the stuff I want to use gets wet in a rain storm. So what would normally be say around 8-10% (depending on the time of year) might be 11-14%.

Assuming it is sunny, I put the wood to be dried against the house and keep turning it every hour or so. If I forget, it starts to cup towards the side of the sun and then the fun begins. Usually can get a good 2-4% reduction in MC in 2 to 4 days in say 85 degree weather, longer/shorter depending on the temperature.

Cut the wood a "real good" 1/4" oversize and this time of year, plan on a week to dry. Of course, if no one is home to turn the wood, it won't work that well.

5. I'm assuming that the wood that was cut last year had the ends painted. If not, or cutting the wood to size will expose the ends, make sure to paint them.

And one more thing that comes to mind is that when your preparing the wood, i.e., planning/jointing, etc., do it in steps. So take maybe 1/32 off, wait a day, take another 1/32 off, etc.

Regards and good luck, Joe

[Scott Banbury]

Andy,

If sawn well from tension free logs you should have no problem using it in a picture frame as long as the molding profile isn't more than 2".

If wider than that, the shrink in width relative to the no-shrink in length may open your miters.

Use polyurethane glue as is works best in moist woods.
Scott Banbury