Advice for moving drying stack? Primarly regarding stickers

[Keith Kelly]

I have about 400bf of oak, hickory, and walnut that has been stacked in my garage and drying the past 8 or so months. This is my first drying attempt and I have learned a lot of lessons...particularly about sticker quality.

I'm under the impression that moving them inside for a few months before using them would be good. My current stickers are plywood strips about 24" long, and they have bowed based on the cupping of the wood underneath them (about 10% of the boards are definitely cupped, 20% are slightly cupped, and 70% look in great condition)

So... when I restack these in my basement (climate controlled), should I make better stickers? Or, since most of the drying has already been done, can I get away with stacking the non-cupped pieces with the straight plywood stickers between them?

[Jeff Duncan]

A bit of cupping doesn't hurt anything, in fact it would be unusual to not have some cupping in the dried wood. It's just a part of the drying process. I don't understand why cupping would have any affect on your stickers though? Unless your plywood was exceptionally thin, I can't imagine it would have contorted to the cupping? Anyway I would stack what your going to need in the basement and use the stickers as is. Unless they're completely mangled I don't see why they'd be a problem. I don't think I'd stack the whole pile down there as there's likely still quite a bit of moisture in the wood that's going to come out, (I'm assuming this is air dried wood we're talking about correct?), and you don't want to add too much moisture to your shop;)

good luck,
JeffD

[Keith Kelly]

Yep its air dried. A couple clarifications:

Regarding the stickers bent, it's more towards the top, and where there are say 3 oak boards across, and only the middle has cupped. In this case, the middle board is now thicker than the two side boards, so the sticker arches up.

Mainly I'm concerned that the 3/4" plywood stickers might not have done a great job of distributing pressure needed to minimize cupping.

Thanks for the advice. It's actually what I wanted to hear. My shop is in the garage, so I'm excited about having the wood moved out!

[Mark Bolton]

Kieth, my interpretation of what you're saying is the top of the stack cupped worse than the rest? This would be normal if you hadnt heavily weighted the stack as the lower boards in the stack will inherantly be flatter due to the weight as well as slightly less rapid drying.

You can sometimes reduce or avoid this with dense, even, stacking and weighting your packs. Between the weight and not allowing the top couple layers tondry so quickly it csn help a bit.

[Yonak Hawkins]

There's nothing wrong with plywood stickers and the only reason thin stickers would be inadvisable was if they didn't allow for enough air to circulate. ..But you said the stickers are 3/4", which is typical. As Mark said, boards toward the top of the stack would be more prone to deform because there isn't the weight on them that the boards at the bottom bear.

Are you saying the top, middle boards are thicker because they have cupped and that's why the upper stickers are arched ? Stouter stickers would not have prevented that. The only difference may have been that, instead of bending, stouter stickers may have raised the outer boards at the top when the middle boards cupped.

[Yonak Hawkins]

Keith, after reflecting on your concern overnight I believe I'm wrong about thin or easily bendable stickers and I see your point about heavier stickers. I more appreciate the value of stout stickers. Thank you.