My lumber buying mistake

[Zachary Hoyt]

I made the mistake of bidding in an online auction of surplus lumber from a sawmill in Linwood NY. I got 320 board feet of what was supposed to be air dried soft maple lumber for about $1.60 a board foot plus tax, so that seemed good. I need to make cabinets, bookshelves, trim boards etc for a house I bought which I am planning to move into in the late spring or early summer.

I paid online, and when I drove out to get the wood I found that while the bundle looked good on the outside it was moldy on the inside and about as wet as if it had just come off the mill. The seller/sawmiller told me he takes the wood right off the mill and stacks it up with 1/4" thick stickers between the layers and bands it together. He said he had cut it 6 weeks ago, and that it had been very wet since then so it wasn't his fault that it was not dry. I told him I thought it was unethical to represent this wood as being air dried, but I took it home with me since I had already paid and there is no recourse in an auction, of course.

I will be able to use it eventually, but I don't know how long it will take to get it dry enough to work with. I put in inside, stickered with real stickers that are 1" thick like they are supposed to be, and am blowing a fan through the pile on low to keep the air moving. It's pretty dry in here and getting drier so I'm hoping by February I may be able to get to work on this wood.

It was my fault that I didn't call the seller and ask what the term 'air dried' means to him. I would strongly advise against buying lumber from this person, he has been sawing for a long time and should know better than to do what he's doing. i am posting this as a cautionary tale, don't buy lumber sight unseen unless it's from a very reputable and well known source.

[Justin Rapp]

I made the mistake of bidding in an online auction of surplus lumber from a sawmill in Linwood NY. I got 320 board feet of what was supposed to be air dried soft maple lumber for about $1.60 a board foot plus tax, so that seemed good. I need to make cabinets, bookshelves, trim boards etc for a house I bought which I am planning to move into in the late spring or early summer.

I paid online, and when I drove out to get the wood I found that while the bundle looked good on the outside it was moldy on the inside and about as wet as if it had just come off the mill. The seller/sawmiller told me he takes the wood right off the mill and stacks it up with 1/4" thick stickers between the layers and bands it together. He said he had cut it 6 weeks ago, and that it had been very wet since then so it wasn't his fault that it was not dry. I told him I thought it was unethical to represent this wood as being air dried, but I took it home with me since I had already paid and there is no recourse in an auction, of course.

I will be able to use it eventually, but I don't know how long it will take to get it dry enough to work with. I put in inside, stickered with real stickers that are 1" thick like they are supposed to be, and am blowing a fan through the pile on low to keep the air moving. It's pretty dry in here and getting drier so I'm hoping by February I may be able to get to work on this wood.

It was my fault that I didn't call the seller and ask what the term 'air dried' means to him. I would strongly advise against buying lumber from this person, he has been sawing for a long time and should know better than to do what he's doing. i am posting this as a cautionary tale, don't buy lumber sight unseen unless it's from a very reputable and well known source.


1 year per inch, so if it's cut 4/4 you will use it in 46 weeks from now. The first bunch of months if you can stick / stack it outside under cover so it won't get re-wet it will dry a bit faster, esp in winter with dry air and a breeze. However i've dried some wood indoors and you don't need a fan on it really. If you fan it and dry it to fast it will warm / crack etc. BTW, I use 1/2" sticks all the time for stacking, it's plenty. 1/4 however is small unless they are small boards.

Don't forget to treat the ends of the boards (house paint works just fine) to prevent cracking.

[Zachary Hoyt]

1 year per inch is not meaningful, it depends a lot on the circumstances. In the loft here I can get lumber as air dried as it gets in the NE US in a month or two in the summer, but in the winter it dries far more slowly. I'm running the fan for a few days to try to get the mold/surface moisture dried out of the middle of the stack, but then I'll just let it sit for a while without the fan and see what happens.

[Justin Rapp]

1 year per inch is not meaningful, it depends a lot on the circumstances. In the loft here I can get lumber as air dried as it gets in the NE US in a month or two in the summer, but in the winter it dries far more slowly. I'm running the fan for a few days to try to get the mold/surface moisture dried out of the middle of the stack, but then I'll just let it sit for a while without the fan and see what happens.

Ok, well you know your conditions where you are at, and if you are storing in a loft, in summer, it's more like the wood is in a kiln if it's 115 degrees up there. I am air-drying wood all the time for about 15 or so years now. I buy wood from local sawyers and stick/stack it and it's ready in a year, sometimes 1.5 to 2 if it's a slab. I use a moisture meter to be sure.

[Zachary Hoyt]

Here's a link to a thread on WoodWeb that includes a comment from Dr. Wenger about air drying times:
https://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Time_to_AirDry_Thick_Lumber.html

The wood is in a heated space, with current RH at about 40%, so I am hoping it won't dry too fast and crack. Being soft maple I think there's a better chance of avoiding damage than with some other woods, but I'm not sure. I usually let the wood air dry more slowly in the unheated loft, and then bring it in to acclimate, but time is not on my side now.

[Mark Bolton]

1 year per inch is a wives tale. Stickered inch lumber will effectively lose all its going to lose in 4-6 mos. It may pull down a half percent or percent more with long term stickering but without heat pretty much nada. The year per inch only pertains to thick material slow drying.

Your stickered pile with a fan will likely be even faster than 4-6.. If your worried about drying it too fast cover the pile with plastic and you'll stall the drying.

[Mark Bolton]

Here's a link to a thread on WoodWeb that includes a comment from Dr. Wenger about air drying times:
https://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Time_to_AirDry_Thick_Lumber.html


Keep in mind that Gene's comments are most often related directly to commercial operations. i.e. air drying your material for more than 60 days before going into the kiln is #1 wasting time ($$) and increasing your exposure to degrade. That doesnt necessarily mean that the wood is saleable "air dried" lumber in 60 days. In the piles Ive stacked off the sawmill in average weather, covered outside with dunnage roof tin (so still seeing dew, damp, wind blown rain, which helps slow drying) 4-6 months is way past its max air dry MC. After that its either got to go into the kiln, barn attic, whatever to go any further. The 1 year per inch has never held true for anything other than large thick slabs/timbers and those you often have to slow down heavily (plastic).

[John TenEyck]

Here's a link to a thread on WoodWeb that includes a comment from Dr. Wenger about air drying times:
https://www.woodweb.com/knowledge_base/Time_to_AirDry_Thick_Lumber.html

The wood is in a heated space, with current RH at about 40%, so I am hoping it won't dry too fast and crack. Being soft maple I think there's a better chance of avoiding damage than with some other woods, but I'm not sure. I usually let the wood air dry more slowly in the unheated loft, and then bring it in to acclimate, but time is not on my side now.

40% RH with lumber that's above FSP is too low; there's a high risk of degrade. I use EBAC's drying schedules for drying lumber. For soft maple you don't use 40% RH until the MC is below 15%. At FSP (29% MC) the specified RH is 75%.

There's no point in painting the ends after 3 days of the wood being cut to length, whether log or lumber.

I would put a plastic tent around your stack with a dehumidifier, fan and heater, and follow EBAC's drying schedule with regards to MC vs. RH. If you add insulation you'll be able to follow EBAC's temp. schedule, too, at least partially, and that will accelerate the drying. In the end, RH is key to avoiding drying problems. I dry AD wood in a foam and fiberglass insulation box that's in my unheated shed with nothing more than a fan and 1500 W heater. AD wood will dry in 2 to 3 weeks for less than $50 for 500 BF. You don't need to exceed 110F but it's possible to go to 140F if there's a need to sterilize the wood. With wood at 25% it takes about a month for 4/4 and 6 weeks for 8/4, depending upon the species.

John

[Richard Coers]

I would not have moved it inside, nor would I have put a fan on it. If the center boards are dead wet, you're going to dry it too quickly and get some nasty checking. Humidity is very low in the winter and you can't rush the wood when really wet. Soft maple dries easily, but also attracts powder post beetles. If you have them in your region, get that lumber sprayed with a Borax based preventative insecticide, PDQ. Something like Tim-Bor or Bora Care. Hopefully they haven't moved in already. Then I'd find a mill with a kiln. You do have the creative option of leaving it tight packed and making spalted soft maple too.

[Patrick Kane]

1 year per inch is a wives tale. Stickered inch lumber will effectively lose all its going to lose in 4-6 mos. It may pull down a half percent or percent more with long term stickering but without heat pretty much nada. The year per inch only pertains to thick material slow drying.

Your stickered pile with a fan will likely be even faster than 4-6.. If your worried about drying it too fast cover the pile with plastic and you'll stall the drying.

I had several thousand bdft of walnut sawn last year, and the 5/4 was down to 11%+/- in 5-6 months. The 8/4 was at that point before 18 months. I havent tested the 12/4 yet, but i wouldnt be the least bit surprised if its ready to sit in a conditioned shop to drop another 1-2% in a couple months. Wood exposed outside to a breeze will dry a lot faster than i expected.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I guess I am conducting an unintentional experiment here, and at worst I can burn the wood in the boiler if I ruin it. I'd like to someday make a drying setup like John TenEyck describes, but since I'm moving to much smaller quarters in 6 months or so I don't think I want to try to do it now. PPBs are something I have never seen here, I think they are more common a bit further south and west from what I have heard. We do have bugs in wood but they are only active when the wood is wet and leave or die when it dries out, from my experience. Thank you all very much for your advice.

[Jim Becker]

Bummer on how that seller represented wet wood as "air dried"...and their excuse about wet weather and only 6 weeks since cutting is major bogus.

You might want to reconsider having it stacked inside. Air drying is best outside where prevailing winds wick away the moisture from the stack and there's no need for electricity to run the fan. A simple rain/snow cover on top is all you need; otherwise the stack is open to the air so the wind can do its thing.

Ironically...I had several logs milled up today at the old property and I brought it back to the new property, stacked and stickered it. I. Am. Beat!

468361

[Curt Harms]

I've seen no mention of a moisture meter in this discussion. I've heard even the inexpensive pin type meters work pretty well. I doubt the inexpensive ones are are as accurate as the more expensive ones but if they're repeatable, tracking the moisture % over time has value as well. Once a 'new' board is the same moisture as wood that has been in the same space for a year or more the 'new' board isn't going to get drier. As far as 'finished' moisture, I've had wood in a heated basement test 6% to 7% in late February or early March. I do have a dehumidifier for summertime use but that same board that was 6% in late February will be 10% or more by late summer depending on where I set the dehumidifier. Before we got the dehumidifier summer moisture content in a fairly dry basement would run 12%.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I normally stack lumber in the loft of the sawmill building which is very well ventilated, but over the winter it dries pretty slowly out there. I haven't had to stack hardwood lumber outside since we built that building in 2008. I am hoping to hurry this wood along a bit, as I would not expect it to be ready to use till June if I left it in the loft. Maybe I will ruin it by drying too quickly, but I hope not. I have a very old Delmhorst analog moisture meter but it has not been calibrated in the 10 years I have had it, and for who knows how long before that, so I don't know how helpful it would be. My plan is to wait a couple of months and then cut off a 2 foot piece and weigh it, and put it in the boiler room for a couple of weeks, weighing it every few days. If it loses more weight I'll know it wasn't dry yet, but if it stays pretty close to the same I'll be ready to try working with the maple then. The boiler room is hotter and drier than the rest of the heated building.

[Justin Rapp]

I've seen no mention of a moisture meter in this discussion..

post #4 i mentioned use of a moisture meter. I really is the best way to make sure the wood is ready for use. I see no point in being inpatient, spent a lot of time building something only to have the wood not be ready for use.

[Patrick Kane]

Yeah, i would say a moisture meter is CRITICAL when drying your own wood. Its kind of critical for anything other than kiln dried material from a reputable supplier. I have no idea how you would tell the difference between 15-18% and 10%. Certainly you can feel the difference between 25-30% and 10%, simply by the weight of the board. I have a few hundred dollar pinless meter, and i like how quickly it can check 3/4" depth on boards without leaving marks. I use it on everything now, and its a good business practice. Who is to say the kiln dried sapele didnt sit outside in an open air pole barn for months in the humid summer?

Good luck with the process. I had fun drying walnut and found it to be pretty rewarding. It would be significantly better/easier with some type of material handler, like a skid steer with forks, and a level concrete pad with a roof over it. As Jim can attest to, manually stickering 500+ bdft in one go is awful work. Especially wet 8/4+. I would do it again. Not for another couple of years, but its worth the effort.

[Zachary Hoyt]

Yes, a meter would be good. The advice I saw on WoodWeb back when I started sawing lumber in 2007 was that you had to spend $300-400 to get a quality meter and to have it calibrated regularly if you were using it to sell lumber, so I never pursued it. Since 2008 I've averaged 5-7k board feet of hardwood lumber each year, and have cut down the trees, skidded them with an old tractor to the mill or to a wagon to haul to the mill, milled the logs, pushed each 4/4 board up through the opening in the wall above the mill into the loft, and stickered them up there. Then when customers come I go through the pile with them so they can choose the boards they want. I tell people when the boards were cut, and they can see how they're stickered and decide for themselves how dry they think they are. I kept 8/4 boards on the ground floor on carts, stickered, or leaning against the wall. They were too heavy to push up through the opening into the loft. It's pretty labor intensive, but I have enjoyed it. Once I move next year I won't have the sawmill anymore, nor the woods to cut trees from, but I have had a good time these past years and am now ready to let go of that part of the work and focus on instrument building full time.

[anne watson]

Move to Arizona, wood will dry just fine if parked outside and the packrats have found something else to move into their nest, like coffee cans.

[Jim Becker]

There are some decent moisture meters available these days from Wagner and others that are reasonably priced and well spoken about. I've been thinking about getting a new one as I have a really old Wagner (like over 20 years old) that requires consulting an incomplete paper listing to do species adjustments, etc. It's only money... ;)

[Ronald Blue]

I recently got this moisture meter and it seems to be decent for the cost. It's a Klein which is a respected name in electrical tools. For $40 it seemed worth a chance.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SZX8QXH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Justin Rapp]

I recently got this moisture meter and it seems to be decent for the cost. It's a Klein which is a respected name in electrical tools. For $40 it seemed worth a chance.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SZX8QXH/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

That does look like a nice one. Might be time to upgrade my old pin-style detector.

[John TenEyck]

Moisture meters are great when you are buying wood. The OP's original post points that out. At home they can be handy but aren't necessary. All you need to do is cut a piece of wood out of a board, weigh it, put it into the oven at 220F until the weight remains constant. The difference from wet to oven dry divided by the oven dry weight is the MC. This value will be average MC for that sample. A moisture meter will read some value near the surface or at some distance below the surface but almost never the average.

John

[Patrick Kane]

Zach, if you are selling 5,000+ bdft a year, get a moisture meter.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I was selling that much for years, but I'm done now. A lot of it was sold pretty much fresh off the mill, or only a little bit air dried. I told customers they would get the best selection buying it green, or if they waited for it to dry someone else might come and buy the nice pieces, and they made up their own minds what they wanted to do. I didn't have room to dry it all before selling. If I claimed my wood was at a certain moisture content and then a customer claimed it wasn't I'd have a problem, but I just said it was fresh cut, or dryish, or as air dried as it gets in the building, or whatever the situation was. Sometimes customers would bring their own meter, and that was fine with me.

[Scott T Smith]

For the OP, your maple should be dry in 4 - 6 months if stored in a 70 degree environment. I would suggest stickered with no fans for the first 45 - 60 days in order to allow the surface to slowly dry. After that a few box fans 3-4' away from the stack on low should be ok. You really don't want a high rate of air flow through stacks of green lumber when you have it stacked in a house at 50% RH, give or take.

For general knowledge, lumber drying rates are related to species and thickness. As several others have stated, the "1 year per inch" rule is an old wives tale. It does apply to slow drying species such as white oak, but is incredibly inaccuract for fast drying species such as pine and poplar, or even intermediate drying rate species such as maple, cherry and walnut.

Regarding the use of a moisture meter, moisture inside of lumber is stored in two different places. Free water is that which is inside the wood cells, and bound water is that which is inside the actual walls of the cell. Think of an egg - the yolk and egg white represent free water, but any moisture contained within the egg shell is bound water.

As lumber dries, it loses the free water first, until it has dried from green down to around 31% MC, which is the fiber saturation rate of wood. As the lumber dries below 31% it starts losing both free water as well as bound water, and it is only at this point that moisture meters *may* provide an accurate reading.

The price (and quality) of moisture meters is directly related to a few factors, including the depth that the meter will read into the lumber, and if it is sophisticated enough to have corrections for species and temperature. Higher quality meters provide more accurate readings.

One thing to be aware of is that most inexpensive pinless meters will only read 1/8" to 1/4" deep into the lumber. This is not to your advantage when measuring the MC of 8/4 lumber, or lumber that is somewhat freshly sawn. The reason why is that lumber dries from the outside in, and within a few weeks a 4/4 board may measure 15% MC on the shell, but still be 40%MC or higher in the core.

So, for the OP, with his green material, at this point the use of a moisture meter may provide drastically misleading results.

Regarding sticker thickness, most kilns use a 3/4" thick sticker. 1" stickers are commonly found in the air drying world because they are frequently made from edgings off of 4/4 lumber. Using 1" stickers in a kiln requires around 30% more fan CFM in order to provide the correct FPM though the stacks on a fully loaded kiln charge.

For those interested in learning more, this sticky, written by myself and other lumber drying professionals, has a lot of relevant information regarding drying lumber.

https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?233289-quot-Sticky-in-process-quot-Miscellaneous-facts-about-drying-lumber

[Robert London]

I think you have to be realistic. Buying maple for $1.60 a BF from an auction is cheap, unless it's 1 grade above scrap. Ask how long ago it was cut. Air dried can be 6 days, 6 weeks, or 6 months.

Put it up for 3 months and re check the moisture. May not take as long as you think to dry. Good ready to use maple is usually $4 + a BF.

[Mark Bolton]

I think you have to be realistic. Buying maple for $1.60 a BF from an auction is cheap, unless it's 1 grade above scrap. Ask how long ago it was cut. Air dried can be 6 days, 6 weeks, or 6 months.

Put it up for 3 months and re check the moisture. May not take as long as you think to dry. Good ready to use maple is usually $4 + a BF.


I pay $1220/MBF for #1 Common white hard maple (all color graded out and KD of course) and another $0.35/BF for S2S to whatever oversize I spec and straight line ripped one edge. Full packs, but none the less, 1.60 a foot for any Maple, green, does not sound cheap to me.

[Zachary Hoyt]

Me either. When I have maple I sell it for $1 a board foot green or partially air dried. I have been cutting mainly ash the last few years since they've been dying, but still cutting some maple, elm, bitternut hickory etc, all for $1 a board foot. Oak and cherry were $1.50, and butternut which I only had about 3-4 times in 14 years.

[Jim Becker]

You should be able to get good money on butternut right now if you have it....

[Kevin Jenness]

I paid online, and when I drove out to get the wood I found that while the bundle looked good on the outside it was moldy on the inside and about as wet as if it had just come off the mill.

If the lumber has not been degraded badly by your initial forced drying you will probably end up with useable paint grade material. Maple is not very tolerant of the conditions you describe and will likely have at best some blue or gray sticker stains. Lower your expectations and you won't be disappointed.

[Zachary Hoyt]

I may get some stains or spalting, I expect, and that's okay. I'm not aiming to paint it, but a future buyer could paint it if they wanted to. As long as I can get it dry and stable to work with I'll be happy. I don't have any butternut to cut now, we have very few of those trees and I only cut them when they are dying. I think we're marginal climatically, and there is something else that's affecting them but I don't remember what.