wood drying coffen

[lou sansone]

good morning WW

I was wondering if any of you have a wood drying coffin in your shop. I find that in the winter and dryer months my wood stored in my shop is in the 6% range, but in the summer it gains moisture to the 10% range. My wood stored in my second outside building is at EMC ( 12-15 % ). I try to keep a fair amount of wood inside my shop, but I can't keep it all in there ( that is why I had to build a separate building ). I have seen some folks have a wood drying coffin where they can put a few 100 bd feet to keep it toasty and ready for the next project. do any of you have such a thing and if so, could you provide some feedback

thanks
lou

[Jim Becker]

Lou, I'm not sure why you need to do this. Even KD material will acclimate to local conditions. As long as all of the lumber in your project is at about the same MC, you should be fine. I work with 10-12% material all the time with no problems...'just build with wood movement in mind.

Please help me understand what your concerns are...I'd like to learn more.

[lou sansone]

hi jim and others
if you believe the wood forest products lab, you will find that in general EMC in the CT area is on average ~ 12%. For your area jim it is just a little lower @ 11.5%. That means that once you wood is out of the kiln and in an unheated building it will absorb moisture to that value. Which you correctly stated. So if I take maple for example, and put the moistue values into the "shrinkulator" program you end up with ~1/4" per foot of wood shrinkage when you put that piece into a heated space. That is a lot. I understand about frame and panel constuction and all of that. It just seems that if I could keep the wood closer to 8% that I could minimize some of the initial movement of the piece once it is housed in a residence that has some form of climate control.


The other problem is that air dried wood that I like to use, seems to hold onto its moisture for a long time. I have wood that has been air dried for at least 4 years and is still @ 14% ( 12/4/ to 16/4 stock )..The old rule of thumb is 1 inch per year for air drying. I was just wondering if some folks out there did use some type of final toast for their wood. I really don't want to get into heating my wood storage building.

hope this helps

lou