Printable View
I was just watching a sawmill (woodmizer) video on youtube and the sawyer said for air-dry wood, he still puts his wood in the kiln for 24 hours at 150 degrees to 'sterilize' and critters in the wood.
I do air dry some wood but never stabilized it, but sounds like something I should be doing. Is this common practice or is this guy going above and beyond?
Like anything else I would think it depends on your intentions. If you're only doing small stuff for yourself then it may be fine to do without, but if your doing large volume for customers it may be a different story. If you have a problem with bugs, or you handle anything like ash that's known for beetles, then a bug kill cycle could make the difference between good days and making expensive firewood. If all you do is air dry then your product's moisture content is higher than anything that is kiln dried anyways and if you're happy with your results then great. I've never heard of anyone doing a bug kill cycle (150 deg for 24 hrs) on air dry wood without bothering with a kiln drying cycle, sounds like it could cause unintended problems, but I'm fairly new to this myself so what do I know lol.
His heating cycle must be more involved than what he told you or he's just lucky. I follow EBAC's drying schedule and often start with AD wood. Using their cycle the maximum heating rate is 25F / day. It's 30F outside right now so it would take almost 5 days to heat it up to 150F. The maximum cooling rate is 40F / day, so it will take another 2 days to cool down enough to take it out of the kiln.
FWIW, the end of my drying cycle is 130F. When the wood gets to 7% moisture I raise the temp. to 140F and hold it for 24 hours after it gets to 140F. The FPL says you have to keep the wood at 135F (?) for at least 3 hours.
John