Kiln-Dry or Sticker my red oak?

[Paul Lueders]

I hired a guy to bring his portable saw mill to my place to saw up some red oak I logged off back in the woods last winter. I had about 60 logs that varied in size from 27' to 12". We sawed the premium logs into 5/4" by various widths for future furniture projects. The logs that had a lot of knots, we sawed into 2" stock to be used for horse stalls to be built in the barn. A few logs we squared into 2", 3", & 5" stock for the lathe.
In the past I've always air dried my wood. Painstakingly stacking the boards with airspaces, and 1"x1" stickers every 2'. Then cover the pile with few sheets of roofing tin and weighting the tin down with 3 or 4 hefty logs. It takes at least 2 years for the wood to dry. Then I cull the pile and bring the good stuff up to the second story in the barn, where it get really hot and dry during the summer months. I don't sticker the piles in the barn.
I don't have any means of testing the moisture content of the wood, but it usually seems to be quite nice to work with.

My question is:

Am I taking a chance building furniture with this wood?
Have I just been lucky so far, that I haven't had any trouble with worpage or shrikage?
Should I be playing it safe and kiln drying this wood? (I hate spending the money!)

[Steve Clardy]

Well. Too each his own on air drying wood.
I have done it, still have some I have air dried, and have had decent lick with it.
But I use it for my own stuff.
Anything I do for a customer, I buy kiln dried material.

I've got a friend that also saws and dries his own wood.
Recently [ last 6 months ] he has made his own interior doors out of oak that has air dried for 6-7 years.

You ought to see the gap in the panels in his doors. You can see through into the other rooms. Panels shrunk up about a 1/2"

[Ian Abraham]

Sounds like you are doing the air drying correctly, and finishing the drying /storing the wood in a warm loft is probably getting the moisture close to kiln dry levels.

If it works fine for you I'd continue doing it. :)

As Steve points out though, air dried timber stored outside will then dry out more (and shrink) when it's bought into a dryer environment. It will also expand if dry wood is taken to a humid area. If Steve's friend had bought his airdried wood inside far a few months, then build his panels, he probably whould not have had as much of a problem.

Cheers

Ian

[CPeter James]

I use all air dried lumber, mostly red oak. I keep it on sticks until I use it. If I stack it with out the sticks, I have worm problems. beforen I use it, I bring it into the shop and temper it for a few days or weeks. This brings the moisture content down and stabilizes the wood.

CPeter